Ayusha Abbas

• BEng (Hons) Electrical & Electronic Engineering
• Communication using acoustic waves inside the human body

This project analyses the effectiveness of using ultrasonic waves in order to communicate through human tissue. Firstly, the results were obtained by simulating the body environment in Matlab and some theoretical results were produced depending upon the distance between the receiver and transmitter, frequency etc. Results showed that attenuation of signal is linearly related to the distance while transmission, intensity and output power of signal shows an exponential decay as distance increases. Secondly, by assuming that human body has on average 60% water, practical experiment was performed in water and similar results were obtained as the theoretical ones. When distance was varied from 0 to 12 cm it was observed that the power coming out of transducer was reduced by only 24.5 dB which is good for acoustic transmission. Finally, experiment was performed on human body and results showed that good communication and power transfer is possible using this technique.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Supervisor: Mr Jeff Neasham