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Infotech Oulu Lecture Series
An Immersive Visualization Environment to Study RF Propagation from Medical Implants and Wearable Sensors
Lecturer: Dr. Kamran Sayrafian, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standard and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Time: 10:15-11:00
Room: IT112
Abstract
Body Area Networks (BAN) which consist of RF-enabled wearable and implantable sensory nodes are poised to be a promising interdisciplinary technology with novel uses in pervasive health information technology. However, numerous challenges including size, cost, energy source, sensing/actuator technology, and transceiver design still need to be resolved. Knowledge of the propagation media is a key step toward a successful transceiver design. Such information is typically gathered by conducting physical experiments, measuring and processing the corresponding data to obtain channel characteristics. In case of medical implants, this could be extremely difficult if at all possible. In this presentation, a brief overview of BAN is provided. Also, an immersive visualization environment is presented, which is used as a scientific instrument which gives us the ability to observe RF propagation from medical implants inside a human body. This virtual environment allows for a more natural cross-disciplinary interaction between experts with different backgrounds such as engineering and medical sciences. We also show how this platform has been used to determine a statistical path loss model for medical implant communication systems. This model has been adopted by the IEEE802.15.6 international standardization task group on BAN.
Short Bio
Dr. Kamran Sayrafian is a program manager at the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He holds Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering from University of Maryland, Villanova University and Sharif University of Technology, respectively. Prior to joining NIST, he was the cofounder of Zagros Networks, Inc. a fabless semiconductor company based in Rockville, Maryland where he served as President and senior member of the architecture team. Dr. Sayrafian is the co-inventor/inventor of four U.S. patents. He is a senior member of IEEE and an adjunct faculty of the University of Maryland. He has served as invited member of technical program committees of many international conferences such as EuroSSC’08,’09, PIMRC’09, ICC’10, ISMICT’10 and also the technical advisory board of a DARPA program. His research interests include body area networks, mobile sensor networks and RF-based indoor positioning. He has published over 40 conference and journal papers, and book chapters in these areas. He is the recipient of the IEEE PIMRC 2009 best paper award. He has also been a contributing member and the co-editor of the channel modeling document of the IEEE802.15.6 international standardization on body area networks.
More information: Jari Iinatti