Enabling the Internet of Bodies Through Capacitive Body Channel Access Schemes

The Internet of Bodies (IoB) is an imminent extension of the vast Internet of Things (IoT) domain, where wearable, ingestible, injectable, and implantable smart objects form a network in, on, and around the human body. The highly radiative nature of Radio Frequency (RF) IoB devices unnecessarily extend the coverage range beyond the human body, which reduces energy efficiency, causes co-existence and interference issues, and exposes sensitive personal data to security threats. Alternatively, capacitive Body Channel Communication (BCC) confine signal transmission to the human body to reduce signal leakage, experience less propagation loss and reach pJ/b energy efficiency levels. Therefore, capacitive BCC is a key enabler to reach the ultimate design goals of ultra-low-power, high throughput, and small form-factor IoB devices. Albeit these attractive features, the communication and networking aspects of the capacitive BCC are not thoroughly explored yet. Therefore, this paper proposes orthogonal and non-orthogonal capacitive body channel access schemes with or without cooperation among the IoB nodes. In order to address the Quality of Service (QoS) demand scenarios of different IoB applications, we present and formulate max-min rate, max-sum rate, and QoS sufficient operational regimes, then provide closed-form and numerical solution optimal power and phase time allocations. Extensive numerical results are analyzed to compare the performance of orthogonal and non-orthogonal schemes with and without cooperation for various design parameters under prescribed QoS regimes. Obtained results show that capacitive body channel access schemes can provide several Mbps rates even at low transmission powers ranging between -60 and -90 dBm. Moreover, the cooperative schemes are shown to be effective to avoid performance degradation caused by increasing network size, low transmission power, and poor channel quality.