Beyond upgrading the industrial system, the novel generation of wireless communication systems offers the development of the personal body-centric communication system allowing easily monitor certain vital signs during patients’ daily lives. Wearable devices, such as ECG monitor, allow providers and facilities to stay connected to patients, and patients gain better visibility into their health status, resulting in better treatment outcomes.
“As a powerful tool for healthcare and medicine, wireless body area networks have been used in real-time medical applications with continuous biofeedback data to improve the quality of life”, Duc Le explaines.
In the wireless body area networks, the wearable antenna establishes the efficient wireless connectivity of the signal in the presence of the wearer. One of the biggest challenges in developing the wearable antennas is the limited knowledge of the electromagnetic parameters of the textile materials. To address the above-mentioned challenges, Duc Le started the thesis work with the novel material characterization solution.
“In contrast to the conventional material characterization research, our approach also combines the high accuracy, the simplification of the testing structures and ease of the data processing”, Duc Le explained.
In the next phase, the material characterization results are used to develop the antennas for biomedical applications with RFID-based technologies. In comparison with the state-of-the-art wearable antennas, the proposed antennas show superiority in antenna footprint and maximum antenna gain.
“The wearable antenna for biomedical applications not only has to maintain the radiating functions such as directive ration pattern and circular polarization, but also satisfy multiple design requirements as miniaturization, rugged design, aesthetics and sensor integration for long-term use”, Duc Le states.
“I believe the proposed design solutions could contribute to the development of wearable antennas for wireless medical applications and help to pave the way towards the realization of the envisioned biotelemetry,” Duc Le says.
Duc Le is graduated with master’s degree of electronics at Tampere University of Technology. Currently, he is working as 5G system engineer for mobile network unit at Nokia.
The doctoral dissertation of M.Sc. (Tech) Duc Le in the field of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, entitled Advances in Antennas and high-frequency material characterization for wireless body-area networks will be publicly examined in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology of Tampere University at 12.00 pm EEST on Friday 18th March 2022. The opponent will be Associate Professor Paolo Nepa from the Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy. The Custos will be Professor Leena Ukkonen from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University.
The event can be followed also via remote connection
The dissertation is available online at
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2329-5
Photo: Steve Arinno