Phase II: Real-Time Pilot Health, Performance Monitoring in RF-denied Environments

Performance/Health monitoring applications use wearable physiological sensors to acquire physiological signals from the body. The sensed data is generally sent through wireless radio wave communication like Bluetooth for further analysis and inference. However, environments like an airplane cockpit/special operation are susceptible to external Radio Frequency (RF) interferences, as it can interfere with other essential communication. Hence, such RF-denied environment needs a communication protocol to transfer the information from the wearable sensors without any unintentional RF emission. Electro Quasistatic Human Body Communication (EQS-HBC) uses the electrical conductivity of the human body to communicate between devices in and around the body in the Electro-Quasistatic frequency spectrum in the MHz range. Operating at such frequencies enables the signal to be confined within a proximity of the body, creating minimal signal leakage. This makes EQS-HBC an ideal method to transfer information from a wearable physiological sensor to a monitoring device in the central panel of an aircraft in RF denied environment such as aircraft cockpit. It also applies to health, performance monitoring of airmen in special operations in other similar RF-denied environments. Our initial feasibility studies from Phase-I show minimal signal leakage out of the body in RF range, while transmitting information through EQS-HBC, from a wearable transmitter to a receiver connected to a vehicle center console. In Phase II, we will build on the basic science and initial feasibility studies, to develop a miniaturized watch-sized device that can capture physiological signals, digitize it and communicate it with EQS-HBC. This device will be designed through close discussions with AFRL and will simultaneously eliminate RF-emissions and reduce the Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) of the health, performance monitoring device significantly leveraging the orders of power benefits of EQS-HBC over comparable like Bluetooth.