AA V6 I2 Wearing A Wire
AA V6 I2 Wearing A Wire
AA V6 I2 Wearing A Wire
WEARING A WIRE
Simulation helps to optimize body-worn wireless devices for an emerging
class of applications.
By Bert Buxton, Senior Electrical Engineer
Synapse Product Development, Seattle, U.S.A.
weight must be minimized to make it suitable for wearing. Yet the device must be
designed to deliver a signal of sufficient
power to the right location, with good
reception by the target device despite
the fact that the human body may absorb
a significant portion of the signal.
MODELING THE SYSTEM
Synapse Product Development solves
such difficult engineering challenges
from concept through manufacturing
for leading consumer electronics and lifesciences companies. One of the companys specialties is developing body-worn
wireless devices for a wide range of applications. The design of the antenna is
often a major challenge in these devices
because the body absorbs so much energy.
Synapse uses the ANSYS HFSS 3-D fullwave electromagnetic (EM) simulator and the ANSYS human body model
ANSYS HFSS simulation output shows power absorbed by foot and ground.
46
starts the modeling process by importing the geometry of the initial design
from a SAT file. The next step is defining
the electrical properties of the materials,
such as permittivity and dielectric loss
tangent, permeability and magnetic loss
tangent, bulk electrical conductivity, and
magnetic saturation.
Optimizing the performance of the
antenna requires close attention to the
way in which the human body affects
antenna performance thus the need
for a systems approach to analysis. The
ANSYS softwares human body model
enables users to set the dielectric constant
for different parts of the body. Typically,
Synapse engineers vary skin thickness
from 0.4 mm to 2.6 mm and assign it a
dielectric constant of 38. The thickness
of the fat layer is chosen to account for
all impedance-matched effects, typically
half of the wavelength, with a dielectric
constant of 5.3. The muscle serves as a
termination to the model with a thickness of approximately 20 mm and a
dielectric constant of 53.
HFSS automatically specifies the field
behavior on object interfaces and defines
a geometrically conforming tetrahedral
mesh. Adaptive meshing refines the
mesh automatically in regions in which
field accuracy needs to be improved. The
software computes the full electromagnetic field pattern inside the solution
domain. The next step is computing the
ANSYS.COM
generalized S-matrix from fields calculated in the solution volume. The resulting S-matrix allows the magnitude of
transmitted and reflected signals to be
computed directly from a given set of
input signals, reducing the full 3-D electro
magnetic behavior of a structure to a set
of high-frequency circuit parameters.
The HFSS simulation shows the
power absorbed by the body and the gain
of the antenna in the form of a color map
incorporating both the body and surrounding airspace. In the typical case,
simulation results show that the areas
of the body closer to the antenna absorb
more power. In the case of a device worn
in a shoe, for example, the results will
identify the amount of power absorbed
by the ground as well, which sometimes
turns out to be even larger than the
energy absorbed by the foot. Based on
these results, electrical engineers provide feedback to the industrial designers and system engineers, including
information about the geometry of the
antenna as well as how close and where
on the body it can be positioned.
INCREASING RANGE
WHILE SAVING TIME
The antenna performance information
provided by simulation plays an important role in the system design of a bodyworn wireless product. The antenna gain
results are critical in link analysis, which
ANSYS ADVANTAGE
47
ELECTRONICS
Guided by
simulation,
electrical
engineers
typically can
increase the
range of the
product by a
factor of five
while saving
an estimated
three months
of development
time.
Power absorption of a product worn specifically on the wrist
48