Dog IoT: Path Loss and Link Budget Analysis for Canine Wireless Body Area Network

Internet of Animal Health Things is an upcoming domain in both professional and domestic fields related to animal welfare monitoring including dairy cows, racehorses and domestic dogs. Wireless Body Area Networks represent a large allotment in the realization of these applications. Characterization of the path loss between on-body nodes in various surroundings is required when deploying such network. In this paper, the path loss between various on-body transmitting sensors and an on-body receiver is investigated at 2.45 GHz. Simulations using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain method are performed using a representative, homogeneous canine model on which two half-wavelength dipoles are placed at short distance from the body of the dog. Several combinations of transmitter and receiver locations and orientations are explored and for each transmitter location, the orientation and receiver location resulting in minimal path loss is determined. All path loss results are fitted to a log-normal path loss model with path loss exponent n ranging from 2.7 to 3.5. A link budget is composed with the wireless technologies ZigBee. The battery lifetime for several modules is determined. The ZigBee device XB24CAPIT-001 assures 237 days without recharging when using a battery capacity of 5000 mAh with an awake time period of 25%.