Full-Body Case Study of Wearable Magnetoinductive Waveguides

Magnetoinductive waveguides (MIWs) have previously been introduced for use in full-body, wearable applications through single- and dual-layer planar designs. MIW non-idealities that occur in the real-world, such as anatomical curvature, path bending, and clothing transitions, have been studied in isolation. Their cumulative effect has only been assessed through a full-body simulation study which identified that transmission was possible, with some limitations. In this work, we split the analysis into 1) arm-torso and 2) leg-torso to better understand the areas of a full-body system design that present design challenges. We determine that arm-torso transmission is a significant challenge for the dual-layer planar design, with a minimum loss of 8.1 dB higher than the leg-torso scenario. The single-layer planar design performs similarly for both scenarios. Finally, both designs remain viable in both presented scenarios, as also anticipated from the previous full-body results.