{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:31:48Z","timestamp":1760239908485,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":24,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,16]],"date-time":"2019-01-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1547596800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100003626","name":"Defense Acquisition Program Administration","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["UD160070BD"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["UD160070BD"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100003626","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Intra-body Communication (IBC) is a communication method using the human body as a communication medium, in which body-attached devices exchange electro-magnetic (EM) wave signals with each other. The fact that our human body consists of water and electrolytes allows such communication methods to be possible. Such a communication technology can be used to design novel body area networks that are secure and resilient towards external radio interference. While being an attractive technology for enabling new applications for human body-centered ubiquitous applications, network protocols for IBC systems is yet under-explored. The IEEE 802.15.6 standards present physical and medium access control (MAC) layer protocols for IBC, but, due to many simplifications, we find that its MAC protocol is limited in providing an environment to enable high data rate applications. This work, based on empirical EM wave propagation measurements made for the human body communication channel, presents IB-MAC, a centralized Time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol that takes in consideration the transmission latency the body channel induces. Our results, in which we use an event-based simulator to compare the performance of IB-MAC with two different IEEE 802.15.6 standard-compliant MAC protocols and a state-of-the art TDMA-based MAC protocol for IBC, suggest that IB-MAC is suitable for supporting high data rate applications with comparable radio duty cycle and latency performance.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s19020341","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,17]],"date-time":"2019-01-17T11:30:27Z","timestamp":1547724627000},"page":"341","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["IB-MAC: Transmission Latency-Aware MAC for Electro-Magnetic Intra-Body Communications"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"given":"Seungmin","family":"Kim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Korea"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0799-4039","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"JeongGil","family":"Ko","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Korea"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"609","DOI":"10.1147\/sj.353.0609","article-title":"Personal Area Networks: Near-field intrabody communication","volume":"35","author":"Zimmerman","year":"1996","journal-title":"IBM Syst. J."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Astrin, A. (2012). IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks\u2014Part 15.6: Wireless Body Area Networks, IEEE."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"14730","DOI":"10.3390\/s121114730","article-title":"A Review of Protocol Implementations and Energy Efficient Cross-Layer Design for Wireless Body Area Networks","volume":"12","author":"Hughes","year":"2012","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Chen, H., Nie, Z., Ivanov, K., Wang, L., and Liu, R. (2013, January 19\u201323). A statistical MAC protocol for heterogeneous-traffic human body communication. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS2013), Beijing, China."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"143","DOI":"10.1504\/IJUWBCS.2016.080171","article-title":"A survey on ultra wideband and ultrasonic communication for body area networks","volume":"3","author":"Basu","year":"2016","journal-title":"Int. J. Ultra Wideband Commun. Syst."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1121","DOI":"10.1109\/TNET.2014.2316675","article-title":"Medium Access Control and Rate Adaptation for Ultrasonic Intra-Body Sensor Networks","volume":"23","author":"Santagati","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE\/ACM Trans. Netw."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"74","DOI":"10.1109\/MWC.2013.6590053","article-title":"Ultrasonic networking for E-health applications","volume":"20","author":"Santagati","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Wirel. Commun."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"169","DOI":"10.1145\/3161180","article-title":"Enabling Interactive Infrastructure with Body Channel Communication","volume":"1","author":"Varga","year":"2018","journal-title":"Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Phang, T.C., Mokhtar, M.H., Mokhtar, M.N., and Rokhani, F.Z. (2016, January 15\u201316). Time-division multiple access based intra-body communication for wearable health tracker. Proceedings of the 2016 17th International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED), Santa Clara, CA, USA."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"109","DOI":"10.1016\/S0924-4247(03)00060-8","article-title":"Development of wearable intra-body communication devices","volume":"105","author":"Hachisuka","year":"2003","journal-title":"Sens. Actuators A Phys."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.4018\/ijbre.2011070101","article-title":"Characterization of Signal Propagation through Limb Joints for Intrabody Communication","volume":"1","author":"Seyedi","year":"2011","journal-title":"Int. J. Biomater. Res. Eng."},{"key":"ref_12","unstructured":"(2019, January 15). Atmel Corporation SAM R21 Xplained Pro. Available online: http:\/\/www.atmel.com\/tools\/atsamr21-xpro.aspx."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2724","DOI":"10.1109\/TBME.2015.2444916","article-title":"Measurement Issues in Galvanic Intrabody Communication: Influence of Experimental Setup","volume":"62","author":"Callejon","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng."},{"key":"ref_14","first-page":"443","article-title":"A Review of State-of-the-Art on Wireless Body Area Networks","volume":"11","author":"Yazdi","year":"2017","journal-title":"Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1080","DOI":"10.1109\/TMTT.2007.895640","article-title":"The Human Body Characteristics as a Signal Transmission Medium for Intrabody Communication","volume":"55","author":"Cho","year":"2007","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Partridge, K., Dahlquist, B., Veiseh, A., Cain, A., Foreman, A., Goldberg, J., and Borriello, G. (2001, January 11\u201314). Empirical Measurements of Intrabody Communication Performance Under Varied Physical Configurations. Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Orlando, FL, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/502348.502381"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"303","DOI":"10.1109\/TBCAS.2018.2798410","article-title":"A Five-Tissue-Layer Human Body Communication Circuit Model Tunable to Individual Characteristics","volume":"12","author":"Mao","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"199","DOI":"10.1080\/07315724.1992.12098245","article-title":"Bioelectrical impedance analysis: A review of principles and applications","volume":"11","author":"Kushner","year":"1992","journal-title":"J. Am. Coll. Nutr."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"431","DOI":"10.1515\/rnam-2012-0024","article-title":"Modelling of bioimpedance measurements: Unstructured mesh application to real human anatomy","volume":"27","author":"Danilov","year":"2012","journal-title":"Russ. J. Numer. Anal. Math. Model."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1417","DOI":"10.1049\/el.2013.2291","article-title":"Innovative sound transmission system for an intuitive service","volume":"49","author":"Kim","year":"2013","journal-title":"Electron. Lett."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2590","DOI":"10.1109\/JSYST.2016.2544805","article-title":"Anonymous Authentication for Wireless Body Area Networks with Provable Security","volume":"11","author":"He","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Syst. J."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Crespo, A.B., Idrovo, G.G., Rodrigues, N., and Pereira, A. (2016, January 1\u20133). A virtual reality UAV simulation with body area networks to promote the elders life quality. Proceedings of the 2016 1st International Conference on Technology and Innovation in Sports, Health and Wellbeing (TISHW), Vila Real, Portugal.","DOI":"10.1109\/TISHW.2016.7847780"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"21394","DOI":"10.3390\/s150921394","article-title":"Transferring Data from Smartwatch to Smartphone through Mechanical Wave Propagation","volume":"15","author":"Kim","year":"2015","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jha, V., Prakash, N., and Sagar, S. (2017). Wearable anger-monitoring system. ICT Express.","DOI":"10.1016\/j.icte.2017.07.002"}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/2\/341\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:26:26Z","timestamp":1760185586000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/2\/341"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,16]]},"references-count":24,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,1]]}},"alternative-id":["s19020341"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s19020341","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1424-8220"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,1,16]]}}}