Propagation Modeling inside the International Space Station for Radio frequency Identification and Sensing of Astronauts

Space Agencies recognize the importance of crew health to mission success. Wireless wearable devices may provide an independent monitoring of vital signs with no human intervention. Among several options, epidermal sensors based on Radio frequency Identification (RFID) are attractive for the extreme simplicity and comfort, but they offer a poor read distance. The reliability of RFID links involving epidermal antennas that are worn by astronaut is here investigated by first introducing a computational model based on Ray Tracing and then by a preliminary application to a living module of the International Space Station. Numerical results indicate that, thanks to multipath, much longer read distances than in the free space can be achieved with even the possibility to establish a communication link when reader and tags are partially in NLOS configuration.