Abstract

This paper presents a study on the in-body propagation using pork meat at the lower ultrawideband (UWB) frequency band 3.74—4.25 GHz of the wireless body area network (WBAN) standard 802.15.6. Pork meat in terms of the dielectric properties is one of the most similar to human tissues and thus is commonly used in in-body propagation studies. Nevertheless, there are differences in the dielectric properties, creating some differences also in the radio propagation. The first objective of this paper is to investigate by simulations the propagation differences between human and pork tissue layer models. The simulations results show clear differences between the channel characteristics obtained using a human tissues and pork tissues: within the frequency range of interest, the path loss with pork meat can be up to 5 dB less than with the human meat. The second objective of this paper is to study, by measurements, the in-body channel characteristics using different types of pork meat piece having different fat and muscle compositions. It was found that path loss is clearly higher with the pork meat having separate skin, fat, and muscle layers compared to the pork meat having interlaced fat and muscle layers. Furthermore, the third objective of this paper is to study the impact of the meat temperature on the measured channel characteristics by comparing the channels obtained with the meat at the temperatures of 12 °C and at 37 °C. Also, in this case clear differences were observed in path loss: within the frequency range of interest, the path loss was maximum 5 dB lower with meat at 37 °C than with a colder meat. The results presented in this paper provide useful information and relevant aspects for the in-body propagation studies conducted with pork meat.