IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO.
5, MAY 2013
A Smart Wearable Textile Array System for
Biomedical Telemetry Applications
Ping Jack Soh, Student Member, IEEE, Bertold Van den Bergh, Hantao Xu, Student Member, IEEE,
Hadi Aliakbarian, Member, IEEE, Saeed Farsi, Student Member, IEEE, Purna Samal,
Guy A. E Vandenbosch, Fellow, IEEE, Dominique M. M.-P. Schreurs, Fellow, IEEE, and
Bart K. J. C. Nauwelaers, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A smart wearable textile array system (SWTAS)
with direction of arrival (DoA) estimation and beamforming is
proposed and developed for biomedical telemetry applications.
This conformal system enables effective and continuous patient
monitoring when combined with one or more health sensors, as
information about the subject’s health condition is received adap-
tively to guarantee link reliability. This operation is facilitated by a
receiver front-end and a digital baseband beamforming network,
which enables scalability and flexibility. The proposed SWTAS
also features flexible antenna arrays made using textiles, which
are arbitrarily located on a cylindrically shaped body phantom
to ensure wide spatial DoA estimation capability. Besides being
designed to suit on-body placement, the system performance
is also characterized for on-body usage using a commercial
body-emulating liquid, and placed at a realistic distance from
the body, considering user clothing. Investigation indicated a
good performance in the system’s 80 forward plane with a
DoA accuracy of 3 . Finally, a practical evaluation is presented
using two transmitters placed at distinct locations and distances.
The system successfully estimated both DoAs and received the
telemetry signals using beamforming.
Index Terms—Antenna arrays, biomedical communication,
biomedical monitoring, biomedical telemetry, conformal an-
tennas, direction of arrival (DoA) estimation, smart antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE RECENT development in wireless body area net-
works (WBANs) necessitates the integration of various
features onto the conformal radiating systems. WBAN appli-
cations, which range from medical monitoring and sensing,
emergency response, military, sports, and even consumer
electronics, require features such as power efficiency and
self-sustainability [1], [2]. The use of low-profile conformal
Manuscript received October 10, 2012; revised January 29, 2013; accepted
January 31, 2013. Date of publication February 26, 2013; date of current ver-
sion May 02, 2013. This work was supported in part by the IEEE Antennas
and Propagation Society (AP-S), the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education
(MOHE), and the European COST-VISTA IC1102 (Versatile, Integrated and
Signal-Aware Technologies for Antennas) STSM Initiative.
P. J. Soh is with ESAT-TELEMIC, Department of Electrical Engineering,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium, and also with the
School of Computer and Communication Engineering, Universiti Malaysia
Perlis (UniMAP), 02000 Kuala Perlis, Perlis, Malaysia (e-mail: e-mail: ping-
jack.soh@esat.kuleuven.be).
B. Van den Bergh, H. Xu, H. Aliakbarian, S. Farsi, P. Samal, G. A. E.
Vandenbosch, D. M. M.-P. Schreurs, and B. K. J. C. Nauwelaers are with
ESAT-TELEMIC, Department of Electrical Engineering, Katholieke Univer-
siteit Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2013.2247051
0018-9480/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
2253
radiators in body-worn systems is crucial in guaranteeing user’s
comfort without limiting regular movements. Textile antennas
are regarded as one of the most realistic candidates in achieving
these users’ requirements, offering sufficient flexibility, confor-
mality, and ergonomicity [3]–[6].
Such wearable health monitoring systems are not new, as
they have been previously realized for the biomedical appli-
cations domain. Several examples are the smart shirt, VTAM
(Clothes for Teleassistance in Medicine) Project, the European
Wearable Healthcare System (WEALTHY) [7], LifeShirt [8],
and the in-shoe plantar pressure measurement system [9]. Such
vests and worn clothing are integrated with various sensors, ei-
ther made using textile and/or conventional materials, and fea-
ture various health monitoring functions, including electrocar-
diography (ECG), respiration activities, and temperature and
shock/fall sensors. Each of these wearable health monitoring so-
lutions also features a mechanism to channel information back
to the health personnel through the use of existing telecommu-
nication infrastructures and protocols, i.e., global system for
mobile communication (GSM), Bluetooth, wireless local area
netowrk (WLAN), 802.15.4, etc. This feature is crucial, as all
gathered health information from the patient would be rendered
useless if a reliable telemetry link cannot be guaranteed.
This work implements and analyzes a low-cost and flexible
smart wearable textile array system (SWTAS) designed to be
worn on the body, e.g., by health-monitoring personnel for a
reliable telemetry signal reception. Similarly, the described tex-
tile antennas can also be used on patients to transmit telemetry
information. The term “smart” refers to the signal processing
capability that combines antenna signals with different phases
and amplitudes to determine transmitting sensor’s direction of
arrival (DoA), and consequently adapt its radiation pattern to-
wards it [10]–[12]. This DoA capability realized using a digital
baseband beamforming (DBBF) network enables an effective
nonobtrusive biomedical monitoring and telemetry when com-
bined with a wearable textile array and wireless health sensor.
This proposed system can communicate health conditions for
home-bound patients or outpatients to their medical monitoring
personnel by searching for nearby-transmitting medical sensor
nodes through DoA estimation, and consequently, beamforming
toward the intended direction, once a transmission is detected.
This allows for a self-sustaining and continuous patient mon-
itoring, both with the monitored patient in static and dynamic
conditions. To our knowledge, such an arbitrary flexible array
system with a combined DoA estimation and beamforming ca-
pability has yet to be reported in the open literature.
2254 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013

Wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes are typically powered

by a battery or an energy scavenging system. Thus, reducing
the power consumption is of utmost importance. Our system
achieves this by increasing the link margin using beamforming
on the receiving side, allowing use of a weaker on-body trans-
mitter for the same bit error rate (BER). Furthermore, in sys-
tems with more than one receiver, the DoA information could
be used to estimate the position of the WSN node. This extends
the system’s capability with patients’ localization and tracking.
Due to the similarities between this system and acoustic DoA
estimation using human ears, our SWTAS, to some extent, is
human inspired. Besides realizing a smart wearable antenna
system, a proper characterization and validation procedure is
performed for on-body usage, which is unique compared to a
Fig. 1. Diagram showing different components of the SWTAS and its final
recent investigation in [13]. Moreover, a proper DoA-DBBF two-transmitter measurement setup.
capability evaluation is also performed using two wireless per-
sonal area network (WPAN) nodes, placed at specific angles of
incidence around the setup to ensure practical system accuracy.
Solving complications that come along with the utilization of
low-profile flexible textile antennas placed on a curved surface
will also be demonstrated through an improved multiple signal
classification (MUSIC) algorithm.
Section II gives the system overview, including antenna ma-
terials and topology, enabling its conformal realization on a
human body, as well as development details of the custom re-
ceiver subsystem and DBBF. Section III then systematically
presents and discusses the various numerical and experimental
system verifications prior to the real-time evaluation using mul-
tiple transmitters.

II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW

The system aims to implement an effective DoA estimation
and beamforming on a curved human body part, e.g., a human
arm or head. The system can be easily scaled for use on other
body parts with various sizes. Two antennas, chosen to be cir-
cularly polarized, and realized using flexible materials, enable
Fig. 2. (a) Block diagram of the receiver subsystem ( and ). (b) Its
the formation of a 1 2 receiving array, as described in Fig. 1. fabricated prototype.
The gathered RF signals at 2.45 GHz, i.e., in the industrial, med-
ical, and scientific (ISM) band, are then channeled to their re-
spective super-heterodyne receivers ( and ), designed for arbitrarily shaped arrays [14]. This proposed system fea-
and fabricated in-house using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tures a two-element inclined array separated by a scatterer (the
components. Before and after frequency down-conversion to the “phantom”), which makes the calibration phase more complex.
20-MHz IF, these signals are filtered by bandpass filters (BPFs) The conventional MUSIC formulation for a two-element array
at both RF and IF frequencies, prior to a final amplification. assumes an incident wave, from direction , which is re-
This amplified signal is then filtered once more before being ceived by both antennas as
digitized using a high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
This subsystem is summarized in Fig. 2. Processing of these sig- (1)
nals is carried out digitally using the proposed DBBF and its un-
derlying MUSIC algorithm, intended to facilitate DoA estima- where is the distance between the elements, defined from the
tion and consequently beamform the radiation patterns to gather center of each antenna, is the wave propagation constant in
health information from a patient. Each component in this pro- free space (FS), and is the noise added to the signal, as-
posed system will be explained in Sections II-A–II-E. suming similar patterns for both antennas. To find the direction
of the incident wave, the MUSIC algorithm searches through all
A. DoA Estimation Algorithm angles of the spatial spectrum , expressed in (2) as follows
The backbone of this system is its digitally implemented DoA and finds the peak value as the DoA:
estimation algorithm. Out of the DoA algorithms developed
(2)
over recent years, MUSIC is considered one of the best methods
SOH et al.: SWTAS FOR BIOMEDICAL TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS 2255

where is the steering vector and is

the eigenvector corresponding to the smallest eigenvalue of the
correlation matrix , calculated as

(3)

In a typical system, the calibration process only eliminates the

phase and amplitude differences between both signal paths not
dependent on the DoA, i.e., for different RF line lengths. In prac-
tice, the different radiation patterns of the embedded antenna
elements affect the direction of the steered beam. This case is
discussed in [10] for small- and medium-sized arrays placed on
a common flat plane. However, considering arbitrary antenna
placement on the cylindrical structure, the effect of antenna ra-
diation patterns and the cylindrical scatterer has to be included
into the DoA calculations. To calibrate the system, the radiation Fig. 3. Dimensions of the single-element textile antenna and its fabricated pro-
totype (all dimensions in millimeters).
patterns are measured in 12 increments and stored in lookup
tables and . During the DoA calculation, these com-
pensation values will be taken into account when calculating the
steering vector. Interpolation is used to estimate the phase and
amplitude difference between calibration points. The presented
system has two modes of operation for performing the calibra-
tion. In the first mode, the system is set up and a transmitter is
moved around the receiver. On the other hand, the system can
also be installed on a rotating platform. A fixed transmitter is
then set up in front of the SWTAS. When the calibration button
in the software is clicked, the platform will rotate and the cali-
bration will be performed automatically. The automatic setup is
shown in Fig. 4. The expression for the steering vector is then

(4)

This steering vector removes the ambiguity and widens the de-
tectable range. The peak value of the spatial spectrum
gives the calibrated DoA.

B. Textile Materials and Antenna Design

Flexible materials used to fabricate the antenna are catego-
rized into conductive and nonconductive textiles. The former,
ShieldIt Super from LessEMF Inc., is used to build the radiator
and ground plane of a square-shaped microstrip antenna. These
two elements are then secured on both sides of a 3-mm-thick
nonconductive felt substrate. Measurements have estimated
the relative permittivity of felt as 1.45 and its loss tan-
gent as 0.044. On the other hand, the conductivity of
the ShieldIt textile is calculated using its 0.05- sq surface
resistivity provided by the manufacturer, yielding a tex-
tile conductivity of 1.18 10 S m [15]. This textile is
0.17-mm thick. A 50- SMA connector is used to feed power
into the structure, and connection to the textile patch is enabled
by soldering. The initial dimension of the microstrip antenna
patch is estimated through a well-known procedure defined in
[16], whereas the circular polarization (CP) feature is realized
through a diagonally fed probe and a pair of chamfered edges,
each placed diagonally at opposite ends of the patch. Sim-
ulations are carried out using a commercial electromagnetic
solver, CST Microwave Studio [17]. Detailed dimensions and
a fabricated prototype are shown in Fig. 3. The simulation and
Fig. 4. SWTAS system simulation and measurement setup, consisting of the
two antennas and cylindrical phantom (all dimensions in millimeters).
measurement setups are shown in Fig. 4. The element spacing
of more than is chosen to suit possible application on
various human body parts, for instance, the diameter of a male
arm is approximately 10 cm.
C. Body Phantom (BP)
A curved human BP is emulated using two cylinders with
diameters of 120 and 80 mm. Each cylinder is 250-mm high.
Placing the antennas on this setup with the cylinders filled with
body-emulating liquid consequently enables systematic perfor-
mance characterization and behavioral analysis, similar to an-
tenna placement in proximity of the body. The smaller Plex-
iglass cylinder, which is water tight, is placed into the larger
cylinder made of similar material. For the larger cylinder, two
2256 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013
holes with 10-mm diameter are drilled 85 mm from its top to en-
able insertion of RF cables and connection to both antennas. A
commercial body-emulating liquid, MSL2450V2 from SPEAG,
fills the smaller cylinder, thus providing a 20-mm antenna-to-
body distance for on-body antenna evaluations. This distance
represents a combination of a person’s clothing and any air gaps
in practical situations.
D. Receiver Subsystem
The block diagram of the receiver subsystem is shown in
Fig. 2. This board receives the antennas’ output signal and then
filters, amplifies, and down-converts this signal to a 20-MHz
IF. The used RF amplifiers are ADL5240, the IF amplifier is
an AD8366, both from Analog Devices, and the mixer is an
LT5525 from Linear Technology. The IF signal is then sam-
pled by the ADC (LTC2195). To ensure the best digital signal
quality upon conversion, the received signal must be amplified
to match the 2-V ADC input dynamic range, besides both com-
ponents being compliant in terms of frequency. This is achieved
by using programmable amplifiers. The down-conversion to IF
is performed by the mixer. Due to the relatively low working
frequency, the RF and phase-locked loop (PLL) boards are fab-
ricated on single-layered FR4 substrates with 1-mm thickness.
Several BPFs are also utilized within the lineup, one placed
after each of the RF and IF amplifiers and another after the
mixer. An identical receiver board is required for each receiving
antenna. A PLL, ADF4350, is used as the local oscillator (LO)
to generate sine waves for the down-converting mixer in the
receiver setup. This then generates a continuous-wave (CW)
signal at 2.45 GHz, which is controlled by the field-pro-
grammable gate-array (FPGA) board via a data interface.
E. DBBF
The DBBF is implemented in an FPGA using the hard-
ware/software co-design concept. An off-the-shelf low-cost
Atlys Spartan-6 board from Digilent Inc., shown in Fig. 4,
is used in our system. The signals from the analog front-end
are first sampled and digitized by an ADC. This digitized
input is then calibrated as mismatches between the two analog
down-converting paths from the two antennas are expected to
exist. The FPGA contains the complete digital demodulation
path for data communications, which utilizes high-speed par-
allel programmable components, as “hardware.” This includes
the digital waveform synthesis, digital quadrature mixer, and
cyclic redundancy check/finite impulse response (CRC/FIR)
decimation filter. All these digital function blocks are inte-
grated via an advanced extensible interface bus (AXI-bus),
which is mastered by an embedded CPU. The software within
the embedded core handles the data processing. A demonstrator
controlled by a laptop is used to read the collected data and
to apply the MUSIC algorithm to determine the DoA. During
the estimation process, ambiguity in terms of spatial aliasing
is known to be present. This can be solved by calibrating the
amplitude and phase response of the system. The antenna that
receives the highest signal level is more likely to have the
signal source originating in its proximity due to the directivity
of the used antennas. Furthermore, the presence of a cylindrical
scatterer, i.e., human body, attenuates the signal impinging on
the other antenna element. The system will still work off a
human body even after calibration for this application. Multiple
wall mount receivers could thus be used to form a patient po-
sition tracking system. To allow further system demonstration
and to emulate possible regular human movements when this
system is worn, a mechanical rotor is developed to hold the
antenna array. The array can therefore rotate and always track
the transmitter in its vicinity, enabling the system to be more
flexible.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In this section, evaluation of the overall system is performed
systematically and results are presented in parts. All compo-
nents are evaluated in detail, starting with the independent tex-
tile radiators in FS, followed by the analysis of performance
changes when placed on the human BP. As will be detailed
later, the radiators are seen to be immune enough from the ef-
fect of mutual coupling and on-body detuning. Next, an assess-
ment of the received signal amplitudes and phases with a single
transmitting source originating from different angles around the
setup is presented. This is to ensure that the setup is receiving ex-
pected amplitudes and phases on each radiator’s port, avoiding
any discrepancies caused by the external factors, e.g., faulty an-
tennas and cables, or overwhelming signal absorption by the
phantom. The accuracy contributed by the calibration procedure
proposed in Section II is then analyzed to determine the level of
DoA estimation improvements compared to theoretical MUSIC
calculations. Finally, the overall working system is examined
in a practical manner, where it is placed within two interfering
signals of different originating angles and distances. With this,
the system’s ability to detect the closest source(s), based on the
highest received power, could then be firmly verified.
A. Radiator Evaluation in FS
The two designed and fabricated antennas of similar build and
performance, referred to as antenna and , are placed on
the phantom’s left and right sides, respectively. Fabrication was
carried out using the procedure and tools defined in [15] with
an estimated accuracy of approximately 0.2 mm. Simulated and
measured reflection coefficients shown in Table I indi-
cate good agreement, satisfying ISM operational requirements.
Simulations indicated a 10-dB impedance bandwidth (BW) of
320 MHz, while measurements of and indicated 240 and
270 MHz of BW. This difference can be attributed to the proce-
dure and simple tools utilized, resulting in inaccuracies during
fabrication. This can be solved by using metallic molds during
textile dimensioning at the expense of cost and production time.
Within these impedance BWs, measurements also indicate that
antennas and are each producing 100 and 80 MHz of
left-hand CP BWs, determined by the 3-dB axial ratio borders.
This is in very good agreement with simulations, which pro-
duced 80 MHz of CP BW. Independently evaluated radiation
patterns for and shown in Fig. 5 indicated an excellent
agreement with simulations. Maximum radiation direction is
measured to be at 1 and 0 for and , respectively. Sim-
ilar 4.8- and 4.3-dB measured gains are produced in FS by
and , respectively.
SOH et al.: SWTAS FOR BIOMEDICAL TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS 2257

TABLE I
SIMULATED AND MEASURED TEXTILE ANTENNA PERFORMANCE IN FS

Fig. 6. Measured radiation patterns for and in FS and on BP.

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured radiation patterns evaluated in FS.

Fig. 7. Measured reflection coefficient and axial ratio for flat and bent and
in FS and on BP.
B. Radiator Evaluation on BP
The application of the antenna system on a human body is
expected to assist DoA estimation by providing a distinguished
received power level at each antenna. Thus, the antennas have
been intentionally placed at 70 relative to the forward (0 )
direction, enabling maximum antenna radiation away from each
other to facilitate this feature.
To ensure repeatability, antennas are secured onto the
cylinder using a thin double-sided tape, as shown in Fig. 4.
Although placement in proximity of the phantom is expected
to alter their performance compared to FS, the existence of
the large ground plane on the rear side avoids significant Fig. 8. Radiation patterns for flat and bent and mounted on the BP.
coupling-detuning effects originating from the phantom.
When placed on the BP, the expected 70 forward direc-
tion is slightly shifted to 73 (for ) and 66 (for ), BP. Nonetheless, a comparison of the expected changes when
which is expected to be worse in the absence of coupling im- being used in bent mode compared to the current configuration
munity provided by the ground planes. For visual clarity, these is presented in Figs. 7 and 8, indicating very minor changes in
patterns have been rotated to 0 in Fig. 6 to ensure proper com- terms of reflection, radiation performance, and axial ratios.
parison with their respective FS evaluations. Besides this slight Now that the radiation patterns in FS and on BP have been
beam-rotation ( toward the negative direction, and to- carefully analyzed to ensure proper operation, the final evalua-
ward the positive), the significant reduction of back radiation is tion for this setup before integration with the DBBF is to study
also observable when placed on body, especially for measured the received amplitudes and phases at each and . This is
right-hand circular polarization (RHCP). performed by rotating the setup between ,
Although it is possible to bend the antenna around the BP, the while measuring the complex received signal at each antenna
protruding SMA connector at the rear of the antenna compli- port, with its adjacent port terminated using a matched load.
cates the measurement process. Moreover, since the final proto- Measurement repeatability is clearly obtained for both ampli-
type is meant for a worn biomedical health monitoring system, it tude and phase evaluations. This is illustrated in Fig. 9, which
is foreseen that a direct connection of this antenna feed to the RF reports that antenna is measured twice. A negative ampli-
front end is very likely, eliminating the need for such connec- tude is seen when the right antenna receives more power
tors. This then allows the antennas to be fixed conformal to the relative to the left as the setup is rotated from 170 and
2258 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013

Fig. 10. Simulated spatial amplitudes for the on BP: (a) in flat and conformal
Fig. 9. Measured and simulated spatial amplitude and phase difference for the
configurations and (b) for different cylinder diameters.
on body setup.

170 . Two measured amplitude peaks can be observed within

the range, one at 78 and another at 71 ,
agreeing well with the measured on-body radiation pattern with
an additional rotation of 5 . Although both antennas are suffi-
ciently spaced apart, this can still be attributed to the existence
of slight mutual coupling between the two elements.
The unwrapped phases for both and also indicate a
smooth phase transition. An important observation is the exis-
tence of ambiguous phases between 80 and 120 for .
This can be attributed to the very low received amplitudes (ap-
proximately 70 dB) at this antenna port, which resulted from
picking up noise phases instead of the phase originating from the
intended signal source. This can be further reduced by an addi-
tional antenna element radiating toward the back plane of the
Fig. 11. DoA measurement error of the whole setup before and after calibra-
setup. Now, with the understanding and characterization of this tion.
amplitude-phase profile on-body, further calibration will enable
these expected error contributions to be eliminated, ensuring
further accuracy.
This configuration results in DoA ambiguities due to the iden-
Since the system is designed to be mounted on-body, the
tical front and rear phantom sides.
distance changes between the antennas are likely to be min-
The absorption of the electromagnetic energy by the human
imal, unless a severe antenna detachment occurs. Slight element
body and the corresponding safety limit are defined by the
spacing changes due to vibrations during movement is expected
specific absorption rate (SAR) level. As specified in the IEC
to not affect the DoA algorithm. On the other hand, more severe
62209 Standard [18], its limit is 2 W/kg averaged over 10 g
changes, which, for example, are possibly caused by the flexing
of tissue. CST simulations using a Hugo body model resulted
of the arm muscles, are expected to be less than 10 mm in diam-
in a SAR value of 0.014 W/kg. Measurements performed in
eter when mounted on an arm. This phantom diameter variation
a certified facility available at IMST GmbH, Kamp-Lintfort,
will only slightly affect the received amplitude (see Fig. 10).
Germany, yielded 0.013 W/kg. These values agree well and are
Phase difference between elements is dependent on the distance
well below the 2-W/kg safety limit. The detailed measurement
between them. Due to the change in this distance, the calcu-
and simulation procedures are described in [19].
lated DoA will be slightly less accurate. However, this system
can be re-calibrated for the new distance between the antenna
C. DoA-Beamforming System
elements. This is due to the ability of the direction finding algo-
rithm in providing the optimal phase compensation to determine A calibration procedure is introduced to properly include the
the DoA, regardless of the element spacing, thus guaranteeing antenna radiation patterns into the SWTAS. This includes ro-
beamforming and communication link quality. Similarly, small tating the system with steps of 3 from the setup’s zero degree
amplitude changes are observed between antennas mounted flat plane, while a 2.45-GHz CW source is placed at 0 . The calibra-
or conformal in this system, validating our initial investigation tion has been proven to reduce the DoA error within the working
presented for the single elements. Although no evident changes range , as shown in Fig. 11. This graph
are seen when the antennas are mounted directly opposite each has been smoothed, with actual data points marked as “x.” In
other on the 120-mm cylindrical phantom, this configuration is Fig. 12, the calibrated and uncalibrated DoA estimation is com-
expected to result in an isolation of the two antenna elements. pared to the actual value.
SOH et al.: SWTAS FOR BIOMEDICAL TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS
Fig. 12. Ideal angle versus angle estimated by the SWTAS (with and without
calibration).
An anechoic chamber is an almost ideal environment. The
effect of multipath in a practical confined environment will cer-
tainly be more challenging for the DoA estimation. However,
performance degradation resulting from different body sizes
and different on-body mounting locations are factored into
the overall system through the calibration process proposed
in Section II. Sensitivity analysis for specific body sizes or
on-body antenna locations will enable a more robust system,
and are planned to be performed in the near future. The mul-
tipath problems can be tackled by either using time-domain
processing, high-speed modulation, or using more than two
antennas.
Generally, placing a shadowing object between the trans-
mitter and receiver in their line of sight (LOS) results in a
similar relative amplitude drop at each receiving array ele-
ment. Hence, this will render the direction finding algorithm
unaffected since the DoA estimation algorithm takes only the
relative amplitude and relative phase difference of the received
signal to judge DoA. In practice, late incoming multipath sig-
nals are also present. Since these signals introduces new phase
coherency in the received signals, the accuracy of system will
then be reduced. At extreme points where multipath signals
overpower the direct path, the direction finding will lock on
the multipath component. An additional antenna element will
definitely enable an extended system capability. For example,
a three-antenna system will be able to detect the line-of-sight
signal and one multipath signal. Moreover, an additional
antenna element on the orthogonal axis enables a 2-D DoA
estimation, whereas an additional element on the common
axis improves the system’s resolution due to the array element
redundancy. Another limitation of the MUSIC algorithm is that
it is unable to operate with near-field incident waves. Should
this be the case, other methods have to be used.
D. Practical Biomedical Telemetry in WPAN
The final objective of this work is to evaluate practical system
DoA estimation capability and to feed this information back to
the user so that corrective actions can be taken. This is to ensure
the system’s practical functionality for biomedical information
telemetry. To evaluate this, a dual-transmitter measurement has
been performed. These transmitters are placed at 0 and 45
2259
Fig. 13. Beamforming of a 802.15.4 data burst seen together with an FM-CW
jamming signal.
angles and at a distance of 7 and 2.5 m (labeled as and
in Fig. 1), respectively. Signals sent through both trans-
mitters with a 250-kbit/s bit rate and 2-MHz chip rate, according
to the 802.15.4 protocol were successfully demodulated by the
SWTAS.
To demonstrate the beamforming capability of the system,
has been replaced by a jammer, while is transmit-
ting a desired signal. The calibrated steering vector for DoA
estimation is also used for beamforming. In Fig. 13, is
transmitting a data burst from ms, whereas the
jammer is operating continuously throughout this evaluation.
The raw input indicates the signal power received directly from
the SWTAS without processing. As shown, the received power
from transmission is small compared to the jamming
power. After beamforming (dashed line), the signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) has been improved to 5 dB, which allows for a
very good demodulation, as seen in [20]. Most importantly,
the successful demodulation confirmed experimentally in this
setup indicated that the SWTAS is able to detect, beamform,
and demodulate signals from multiple sources in the presence
of interference. These interference are expected when operating
in an ISM band. Although a motorized rotating platform has
been utilized for demonstrative purposes in this work, commu-
nicating the correct direction of signal origin to a human can
be easily implemented using visual signals to the user (e.g.,
electronic displays).
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The design of an SWTAS with DoA estimation and beam-
forming for biomedical telemetry has been presented. The
system development involves a full-scale hardware imple-
mentation and software customization cycle, which ensures
cost effectiveness, ease of scalability, and extended flexibility.
Due to the flexibility offered by the hardware–software–FPGA
codesign, other sensors and applications could be easily de-
veloped, utilizing this system as a black box to handle the
telemetry downlink. A characterization of this system in prox-
imity of a human phantom is first performed, indicating a
comparable performance to its FS operation. It is observed that
the antenna ground plane has effectively avoided a large level
of performance variation when mounted on-body, whereas
changes only involve a back-lobe reduction and slight beam
rotation. Moreover, the arbitrarily located radiators in this
2260 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013
setup enable sufficient spacing for mutual coupling reduction,
besides allowing accurate DoA estimation originating from
the forward plane, with an error of 3 or less. This accuracy is
obtained by a combined received amplitude and phase infor-
mation processing based on an improved MUSIC algorithm.
For biomedical telemetry applications, the final system func-
tionality is evaluated using a two-transmitter setup. It has been
demonstrated that the system is capable of accurately deter-
mining multiple originating sources in its proximity, selecting
the signals and beamforming toward them for telemetry data
reception.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the technical con-
tributions of Dr. A. Enayati and Ir. W. De Raedt, both with
IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, R. Casteels and S. Decock, both
with ESAT–CDE–CMW, Leuven, Belgium, Dr. M. Mar-
tinez-Vazquez and A. van den Bosch, both with IMST GmbH,
Kamp-Lintfort, Germany, and W. F. Hoon and Dr. M. F. A.
Malek, both with UniMAP, Perlis, Malaysia.
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Ping Jack Soh (S’09) was born in Sabah, Malaysia.
He received the Bachelor and Master degrees in
electrical engineering from the Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia (UTM), Johor, Malaysia, in 2002 and 2005,
respectively, and is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium.
From 2002 to 2004, he was a Test Engineer
involved with new products’ test definition for man-
ufacturing purposes. In 2005, he joined Motorola
Technology Malaysia, as a Research and Develop-
ment Engineer, where he was involved with the characterization and testing of
new two-way radio antennas and RF front-ends. In 2006, he joined the School
of Computer and Communication Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis
(UniMAP), Kuala Perlis, Perlis, Malaysia, as a Lecturer, where since 2011, he
has been a Senior Lecturer. He is currently with the ESAT-TELEMIC Research
Division, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. His research interests include planar
antennas, flexible/textile antennas, on-body communication, metamaterials,
passive microwave components, and microwave measurements.
Mr. Soh was the recipient of the CST University Publication Award in 2011
and 2012, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Doctoral Re-
search Award in 2012, and the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society
(MTT-S) Graduate Fellowship for Medical Applications in 2013.
Bertold Van den Bergh was born in Wilrijk,
Belgium, on August 9, 1990. He received the B.S.
degree in electrical engineering and computer sci-
ence from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU
Leuven), Leuven, Belgium, in 2011, and is currently
working toward the Master’s degree in electrical
engineering at KU Leuven. His Master’s thesis is
focused on wireless sensor networks (WSNs).
He has been involved with indoor location systems
and measurement automation.
Hantao Xu (S’12) was born in Guangzhou, Guang-
dong, China. He received the Bachelor’s degree in
electronics and information engineering from South
China Agricultural University, Guangdong, China,
in 2008, the M.S. degree in electronics engineering
(cum laude) from GroepT Hogeschool, Leuven,
Belgium, in 2009, the M.S. degree in electrical
engineering (cum laude) from the Katholieke Uni-
versiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium,
in 2011, and is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree at KU Leuven.
He is currently with the ESAT-TELEMIC Research Division, KU Leuven.
His research interests include beamsteering technology, array signal processing,
and smart antenna architecture.
SOH et al.: SWTAS FOR BIOMEDICAL TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS
Hadi Aliakbarian (M’00) received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees in electrical and telecommunication
engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran,
Iran, in 2002 and 2005, respectively, and is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical en-
gineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
(KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium.
From 2005 to 2007, he was with the Microwave
Laboratory and the Center of Excellence on Applied
Electromagnetics, University of Tehran, as an Asso-
ciated Researcher. In 2007, he joined the TELEMIC
Research Division, Department of Electrical Engineering, KU Leuven. His re-
search interests include different aspects of digital and analog beam steering (es-
pecially in space conditions), small antennas, ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas,
antenna optimization, and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) problems.
Saeed Farsi (S’11) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. de-
grees from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, in
2001 and 2004, respectively, and is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree at the Katholieke Univer-
siteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium.
As a part of his doctoral program, he is currently a
Visiting Researcher with the University of California
at San Diego (UCSD), La Jolla, CA, USA. From 2004
to 2006, he was with the University of Tehran, as a
Research Assistant. From 2006 to 2009, he was with
the Fara-Afrand Company, Tehran, Iran, as a Design
Engineer involved with high-power active/passive circuits in TV/radio trans-
mitters. His current field of research is modeling and linearization of microwave
circuits and systems, and receive-band noise cancellation in RF transceivers.
Purna Samal was born in Wangdue, Bhutan, on
September 7, 1984. He received the Bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering from the College of
Science and Technology, Phuentsholing, Bhutan, in
2008, and is currently working toward the Master’s
degree in electrical engineering (with a major in
electronics and integrated circuits) at the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium.
He is currently in his final year of study, completing
his thesis on textile-based ultra-wideband (UWB)
antennas for body area networks (BAN).
In January 2009, he joined the Electronics and Communication Department,
College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan, Thimphu,
Bhutan, as an Assistant Lecturer.
Guy A. E. Vandenbosch (M’92–SM’08–F’13) re-
ceived the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical en-
gineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
(KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium, in 1985 and 1991,
respectively.
Since 1993, he has been a Lecturer, and since 2005,
a Full Professor at KU Leuven. His research interests
are in the area of electromagnetic theory, computa-
tional electromagnetics, planar antennas and circuits,
nanoelectromagnetics, electromagnetic (EM) radia-
tion, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), and bio-
electromagnetics. He has authored or coauthored approimately 150 papers in
international journals, which has led to approximately 250 presentations at in-
ternational conferences.
2261
Dr. Vandenbosch currently leads the Working Group on Software, European
Association on Antennas and Propagation (EuRAAP). He is the chairman of
the IEEE Benelux Chapter on Antennas and Propagation. He is secretary of the
Belgian National Committee for Radio-electricity (URSI), where he is also in
charge of Commission E.
Dominique M. M.-P. Schreurs (S’90–
M’97–SM’02–F’12) received the M.Sc. degree
and Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from
the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven),
Leuven, Belgium.
As Post-Doctoral Fellow, she was a Visiting
Scientist with Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara,
CA, USA, E.T.H. Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, and
the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), Boulder, CO, USA. She is currently a Full
Professor with KU Leuven. She coedited two books,
contributor to seven books, and coauthored approximately 100 journal papers
and 300 contributions at international conferences. She is an Associate Editor
for the International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies. Her
main research interests concern the nonlinear characterization and modeling
of microwave devices and circuits, as well as nonlinear hybrid and integrated
circuit design for telecommunications and biomedical applications.
Prof. Schreurs has served on the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques
Society (IEEE MTT-S) Administrative Committee (AdCom) since 2009. She
was the vice-chair of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Coordinating Committee
(2009–2010). She has been the chair of the IEEE MTT-S Education Committee
since 2012. She was the chair of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee on
Microwave Measurements (MTT-11) (2005–2008). She is an IEEE MTT-S
Distinguished Microwave Lecturer (2012–2014). She is an associate editor
for the IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS. She is a
reviewer for all of the IEEE MTT-S publications. She is a Technical Program
Review Committee (TPRC) member of the IEEE MTT-S International Mi-
crowave Symposium (IMS), Radio and Wireless Week (RWW), and European
Microwave Week (EuMW). She is a reviewer for various IEEE MTT-S
cosponsored conferences and regularly acts as session chair at conferences and
as a judge for student competitions. She also serves as the technical chair of the
Executive Committee, ARFTG. She initiated the Nonlinear Vector Network
Analyzer (NVNA) Users’ Forum, as well as the IEEE Women in Microwaves
event at EuMW.
Bart K. J. C. Nauwelaers (S’79–M’88–SM’99)
was born in Niel, Belgium, on July 7, 1958. He
received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
(KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium, in 1981 and 1988,
respectively, and the Master degree in design
of telecommunication systems from ParisTech
Télécom, Paris, France, in 1992.
Since 1981, he has been with the Department of
Electrical Engineering (ESAT), KU Leuven, where
he has been involved in research on microwave an-
tennas, passive components, interconnects, microwave integrated circuits and
monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), linear and nonlinear device
modeling, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and wireless communica-
tions. He teaches courses on microwave engineering, analog and digital com-
munications, wireless communications, and design in electronics and telecom-
munications. For the last 20 years, he has served education in several functions,
the last one being Program Director for the Bachelor’s and Master’s programs
in electrical engineering.
Dr. Nauwelaers is former chair of the IEEE AP/MTT-Benelux and past chair
of URSI-Benelux.