2010 First International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Signal Processing and Applications

Narrowband Physical Layer design for WBAN system

BoKeun Choi*, ByungSoo Kim, SangSeol Lee, KyuYeul Wang , YongJun Kim, and DuckJin Chung
School of Information and Communication Engineering,
INHA University
Incheon 402-751, Korea
*
E-mail: sacbk45@hanmail.net

AbstractThis paper propoes the design of PHY simulator for

WBAN system in IEEE 802.15.6. Recently, WBAN system is
most popular system in wireless communication. According to
the technical requirement of the WBAN task group, many
companies and research institutes have proposed physical
layer architectures to provide fundamental technologies for the
WBAN communication systems. Since there are various service
scenarios for in-body or on-body applications, the physical
layer proposals include UWB as well as narrowband
techniques. The implemented WBAN PHY simulator (in this
paper) is designed fixed point that is specified PPDU structure
and modulation method in WBAN TG6. In the WBAN PHY
case, the modulations method is changed by frequency band
and data rate. After implementation of simulator, we are going
to design WBAN for hardware implementation. We are
supposed to implement architecture of a chip that has mixed
mode, PSK and FSK in MICS baseband for WBAN. WBAN
simulator is designed by using MATLAB.
KeywordsWireless Body Area Network, WBAN, BAN,
Wireless Networks.
II. TRENDS OF BAN APPLICATIONS
A number of issues is related to BAN have been being
discussed including applications and usage models, BAN
classification, channel measurement, PHY, key technology
(e.g., antenna), etc. In this section, we describe some trends
of BAN applications.
There are different categorizations for BAN applications
and usage models. Fig. 1 shows a categorization given by the
BAN [5]. That are (I) medical healthcare services, (II)
assistance to people with disabilities, and (III) body
interaction and entertainment.
BAN Application Category
Medical check-up
Physical rehabilitation applications
Physiological monitoring

I. INTRODUCTION
As the growing demand on communication services,
various wireless networking technologies are being
developed. One of the trends attracted by the wireless
communication field is the convergence of technologies with
other research fields. Especially, convergence between
information technology (IT) and bio technology (BT) attracts
the attention by many people to the health care services [1].
IEEE has launched the Task Group (TG) for wireless body
area network (WBAN) in IEEE 802.15 to satisfy the
technical trend [2] [3]. The purpose of the WBAN is to
define new communication standard with physical layer and
medium access control (MAC) protocol for both medical and
nonmedical applications within 3m range. According to the
diverse applications, data rate should cover from 10kbps up
to 10Mbps. For the timeline of the standard process, we
expect that the standard draft will be released on the end of
the year. WBAN system can be categorized into two parts by
its applications: medical BAN and non-medical BAN. Non-
medical BAN can be regarded as wearable consumer
electronics and entertainment devices for the on-body
communications. Medical BAN consists of implant devices
and wearable medical systems to measure the health status of
human body with in-body or on-body communications [4].
Blind person
Speech disability
Artificial hands, legs
Wireless headphone
Contact and non-contact signal follow
Figure 1. BAN application categorization.
There is a wide range of applications for BAN in
supporting medical and healthcare services. In general
manner, a BAN device is a BAN transceiver paring with a
life sign sensor or a set of life sign sensors. These sensors
can collect various vital and healthcare data for medical or
healthcare purposes. Examples of collectable sensor data
include blood pressure, SpO2, electroencephalogram (EEG),
electrocardiogram (ECG), carotid pulse, glucose rate, body
temperature, etc. A typical application scenario of using
these sensor data is real time monitoring of patient state in a
hospital. By attaching BAN devices to patients, vital or
healthcare data can be automatically collected, which is then

978-0-7695-4180-8/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE 154

DOI 10.1109/PCSPA.2010.46
10.1109/PCSPA.2010.243
forwarded to a nurse centre for patient state monitoring. The
benefit of this scenario is that it can reduce the working load
of nurses and result in increased efficiency on patient
management. Other usage models of using sensor data
include at home healthcare, aging people support, physical
rehabilitation assistance, etc [6].
III. WIRELESS BODY AREA NETWORK (WBAN)

A. Narrowband PHY specification

First, this clause specifies a narrowband PHY option for
IEEE 802.15.6. The PHY is responsible for the following
tasks:
x Activation and deactivation of the radio transceiver.
x CCA within the current channel.
x Data transmission and reception.
This clause also provides a method for transforming a
physical-layer service data unit (PSDU) into a physical-layer Figure 3. Block diagram of PLCP Header structure.
protocol data unit (PPDU). During the transmission, the
PSDU shall be pre-appended with a physical-layer preamble The PSDU is the last component of the PPDU. PSDU is
and a physical-layer header in order to create the PPDU. At formed by concatenating the MAC header with the MAC
the receiver, the physical-layer preamble and physical-layer frame body and frame check sequence (FCS). The PSDU is
header serve as aids in the demodulation, decoding and then scrambled and optionally encoded by a BCH code. The
delivery of the PSDU [8]. PSDU shall be transmitted using any of the available data
rates available in the operating frequency band.
3 bits 1 bit 8 bits 1 bit 1 bit 1 bit

MAC Frame Body

SCRAMBLER BURST
RATE Reserved LENGTH Reserved
SEED MODE

MAC Header
BCH MAC MAC Frame Body

FCS
PHY Header HCS FCS
Parity Bits Header Variable Length: 0 N bytes

15 bits 4 bits 12 bits 7 bytes 2 bytes

Remove
PLCP Preamble PLCP Header PSDU
Concatenate Shortened
Bits

Figure 2. Standard PPDU structure. Add Pad

Scambler
Bits
PLCP Preamble shall be added prior to the PLCP header
Insert
in order to aid the receiver in packet detection, timing BCH Encoding
Shortened Spreader
Algorithm
synchronization and carrier-offset recovery. Two unique Bits
preambles are defined in order to mitigate false alarms due to
networks operating on adjacent channels. The two PLCP BCH Bit
Preamble sequences are defined each 90bits. The PLCP Encoder Interleaver
Preamble will be encoded using DBPSK modulation.
The PLCP header is the second main component of the
PPDU. The purpose of PLCP Header is to convey the Figure 4. Block diagram of PSDU structure.
necessary information about the PHY and MAC parameters
to aid in decoding of the PSDU at the receiver. The PLCP
header can be further decomposed into a RATE field, a B. Modulations
LENGTH field, a SCRAMBLER SEED, a BURST MODE WBAN system, especially implant system, should have
field, reserved bits, a header check sequence (HCS), and long battery life. Hence, the simple and efficient modulations
BCH parity bits. The BCH parity bits are added in order to are proposed which are Gaussian FSK (GFSK), Gaussian
improve the robustness of the PLCP header. The PLCP minimum shift keying (GMSK), differential phase shift
header shall be transmitted using the given header data rate keying (DPSK), OQPSK, and phase silence shift keying
in the operating frequency band. (PSSK). The four modulations are well-known and have
relative advantages in bandwidth efficiency, side lobe
reduction, and easiness for implementation for their own
modulation characteristics. GFSK and GMSK have power

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and bandwidth efficiency, respectively. Moreover, DPSK has environment AWGN is used as the channel environment,
an advantage that the receiver does not require estimation BER curve of the simulator #1 is Fig. 6.
overheads for channel and carrier phase.
1) Differential phase shift keying (DPSK): Differential
phase shift keying (DPSK) is a common form of phase TABLE I. MODULATION FOR FREQUENCY BAND AND DATA RATE
modulation that conveys data by changing the phase of the Frequency Modulations
Data Rate
carrier wave. As mentioned for BPSK and QPSK there is an Band PLCP PLCP
(Kbps) PSDU
ambiguity of phase if the constellation is rotated by some (MHz) Preamble Header
effect in the communications channel through which the 75.9,
DBPSK DBPSK DBPSK
signal passes. This problem can be overcome by using the 402 ~ 405 151.8
data to change rather than set the phase. For example, in 303.6 DBPSK DBPSK DQPSK
differentially-encoded BPSK a binary '1' may be transmitted
by adding 180 to the current phase and a binary '0' by 57.5, 75.9,
420 ~ 450 GMSK GMSK GMSK
151.8, 187.5
adding 0 to the current phase. In differentially-encoded
QPSK, the phase-shifts are 0, 90, 180, -90 101.2,
DBPSK DBPSK DBPSK
corresponding to data '00', '01', '11', '10'. This kind of 863 ~ 870 202.4
encoding may be demodulated in the same way as for non- 404.8 DBPSK DBPSK DQPSK
differential PSK but the phase ambiguities can be ignored.
121.4,
Thus, each received symbol is demodulated to one of the M DBPSK DBPSK DBPSK
902 ~ 928 242.9
points in the constellation and a comparator then computes
the difference in phase between this received signal and the 485.7 DBPSK DBPSK DQPSK
preceding one. 101.2,
DBPSK DBPSK DBPSK
2) Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK): Gaussian 950 ~ 956 202.4
minimum shift keying (GMSK) is a continuous phase
404.8 DBPSK DBPSK DQPSK
frequency shift keying modulation scheme. It is similar to
standard minimum shift keying (MSK). However the digital 121.4,
242.9, DBPSK DBPSK DBPSK
data stream is first shaped with a Gaussian filter before 2360 ~ 2400 485.7
being applied to a frequency modulator. This has the
advantage of reducing sideband power, which in turn 971.4 DBPSK DBPSK DQPSK
reduces out-of-band interference between signal carriers in 121.4,
adjacent frequency channels. However, the Gaussian filter 242.9, DBPSK DBPSK DBPSK
2400 ~ 2483.5 485.7
increases the modulation memory in the system and causes
intersymbol interference, making it more difficult to 971.4 DBPSK DBPSK DQPSK
discriminate between different transmitted data values and
requiring more complex channel equalization algorithms
such as an adaptive equalizer at the receiver. GMSK has TABLE II. WBAN SIMULATOR FOR MODULATIONS

high spectral efficiency, but it needs a higher power level Modulation

than QPSK, for instance, in order to transmit reliably the Simulator
PLCP Preamble PLCP Header PSDU
same amount of data. GMSK is most notably used in the
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). #1 DBPSK DQPSK
DBPSK
#2 DBPSK DBPSK
IV. WBAN SIMULATOR
Modulation method of narrowband PHY in WBAN
system is related to frequency band and data rate as shown PPDU Structure DBPSK
TABLE I. As frequency band and data rate, WBAN system modulation

adopts the /2-DBPSK or /4-DQPSK. Considering all of PLCP Preamble PPDU

PLCPStructure
Header PSDU

DQPSK
case in TABLE I, it can be categorized two kinds of the modulation

simulator models as shown TABLE II. WBAN simulators

are designed with MATLAB. AWGN
channel

DBPSK
A. Simulator #1 demodulation

Decoded PPDU Structure

The simulator #1 is adapted two modulation method in a DQPSK
one module. PLCP Preamble and PLCP Header are demodulation

performed coherent DBPSK modulation, and PSDU is

performed non-coherent DQPSK modulation. The channel Figure 5. Block diagram of WBAN simulator #1.

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 V. CONCLUSION
WBAN systems cover variety of applications for in-body
versus on-body communications and medical versus
nonmedical applications. Many proposals are submitted to
IEEE 802.15.6 with different technologies. For the
narrowband systems, proposals show the diversity in
frequency bands, modulations, and other features. In the
WBAN PHY case, the main contents are not stay from this
paper to think recently procedure. So, we are going to design
WBAN systems for hardware. We are supposed to
implement architecture of a chip that has mixed mode, PSK
and FSK, in MICS baseband for WBAN systems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Figure 6. BER curve of WBAN simulator #1. This work was supported by the IDECs (IC Design
Education Center) CAD tool assistance.
B. Simulator #2
The simulator #2 is adapted one modulation method in a REFERENCES
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Figure 8. BER curve of WBAN simulator #2.

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