2012 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems

Interference Reduction Modulation Based on Chirp

Spread Spectrum for Capsule Endoscopy
Myeongwoon Jeon, Kyungchul Kim and Jungwoo Lee
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Korea
Email: indme@wspl.snu.ac.kr, kckim@wspl.snu.ac.kr and junglee@snu.ac.kr

high data rate for capsule endoscopy. OOK modulation [3]

has been popular for applications such as RFID where low
cost/complexity is important. In addition to low complexity,
another advantage of OOK is that it does not need channel
estimation. Since the center frequency of the UWB communications is 500 MHz (UHF band), there may be potential
narrowband (6 MHz bandwidth per TV channel) interference
from TV broadcasting stations. There may be interference due
to other commercial and government communication channels.
It is known that OOK suffers signicantly from narrowband
interference.
To alleviate the interference problem, we consider two chirp
spread spectrum (CSS) based modulation schemes. One is
the chirp spread spectrum - differential binary phase shift
keying (CSS-DBPSK) modulation [4]-[9], and the other is the
chirp spread spectrum on-off keying (CSS-OOK) modulation.
The BER performance of the DBPSK modulation is better
than that of the on-off keying (OOK) modulation, and the
DBPSK modulation does not need channel estimation for
demodulation [10][11]. The CSS system uses a chirp signal
which has varying frequency, and it is well known that the
CSS signal is robust to narrowband interference. However,
a complex circuitry is needed to achieve synchronization
(coherent demodulation) for a CSS system. As an alternative,
we propose a CSS-OOK system which combines CSS with
OOK. A low complexity receiver for the CSS-OOK modulation is similar to a plain OOK receiver which consists of a
low pass lter followed by a comparator. Compared to the
CSS-DBPSK system, the CSS-OOK system does not need
synchronization when non-coherent demodulation is used.
Note that non-coherent demodulation is employed here due
to its low complexity although the performance is degraded
from coherent demodulation. Coherent demodulation of CSSOOK requires a synchronizer which needs to be implemented
by a complex hardware. Though a chirp lter can be used
for improved detection performance (coherent detection), the
proposed system reduces the receiver complexity signicantly
by using non-coherent detection without the chirp lter.
In this paper, we compare the two aforementioned modulation schemes in terms of hardware complexity, robustness
to narrowband interference, and the BER performance. A key
contribution of this paper is to show that the CSS-OOK system
with a proposed simplied receiver is a practical compromise
between robustness and receiver complexity under various

AbstractIn this paper, chirp spread spectrum (CSS) based

modulation schemes for capsule endoscopy applications are
proposed. The On-Off-Keying (OOK) technique has been conventionally used for the capsule endoscopy applications, but it
is known to be susceptible to narrow-band interference such as
TV signals. In order to enhance robustness to interferences, we
propose two CSS based modulation schemes which are chirp
spread spectrum differential binary phase shift keying (CSSDBPSK) and chirp spread spectrum on-off keying (CSS-OOK).
The CSS-DBPSK scheme performs better than the CSS-OOK
scheme in terms of BER, but it has high implementation complexity due to the strict synchronization requirement. On the other
hand, the CSS-OOK scheme has both low receiver complexity
and comparable BER performance. A key contribution of this
paper is to use a low complexity chirp spread spectrum technique
for interference mitigation in capsule endoscopy. A human body
channel model is used in the simulations. Simulation results
show that the BER performance of the CSS-OOK modulation
is in between the CSS-DBPSK and the OOK schemes. We will
show that the CSS-OOK modulation is a practical solution that
achieves good compromise between the interference robustness
and the receiver complexity.
Index Termscapsule endoscopy, human body channel, UWB,
chirp, spread spectrum

I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless communications have been applied to diverse
biomedical elds. In particular, miniaturized transceivers can
be used for wireless medical devices that monitor medical
conditions of patients. A tiny low-power transceiver can be
swallowed into digestive tracts by a human subject for diagnosis and monitoring. Wireless communication systems using
low power transceivers can be used for measuring health data
such as image/video, temperature, pressure, and pH. In this
paper, we focus on wireless applications used for capsule
endoscopy. A wireless capsule endoscopy device is swallowed
into the digestive tracts through the mouth, and it moves in the
digestive tracts while transmitting the video of the digestive
organ. The video data is received by an external receiver
[1][2]. However, such wireless devices communicate through
human body so the transmission loss can be signicant. The
frequency and the transmission power of such devices need to
be carefully selected not to cause any harmful health effects.
In this paper, we study the channel model of human body so
that efcient transmission techniques can be developed and
tested.
In this paper, we consider an ultra wideband (UWB) communication method which offers low power consumption and
978-0-7695-4856-2/12 $26.00 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/SiPS.2012.29

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Fig. 1.

The OOK modulation system.

Fig. 2.

A chirp Spread Spectrum pulse.

interference models and human body channels. In Section II,

we introduce the two CSS based modulation schemes as well
as conventional OOK modulation in terms of transmitter and
receiver processing. Section III gives an overview of a human
body channel model, which will be used in the simulations.
The BER simulation results are presented in Section IV, and
the conclusions are given in Section V.
II. M ODULATION S CHEMES FOR C APSULE E NDOSCOPY
A PPLICATIONS
A. On-Off Keying (OOK) Modulation
The OOK modulation is one of the simplest possible
modulation schemes in terms of implementation. When the
binary data is 1, the transmitter transmits a carrier signal with
xed amplitude, and no carrier is transmitted for the binary
data of 0. There are many different demodulation methods.
There are coherent and non-coherent detection techniques,
but we consider only the non-coherent detection technique
due to its low complexity even though its BER performance
is worse than the coherent detection which requires phase
synchronization. The noncoherent detector typically employs
an energy detector and a comparator. Fig. 1 shows a block
diagram of an OOK system which consists of a transmitter
and a receiver. It is known that the path loss due to human
body can be reduced near the frequency range between 400
and 600 MHz, which is why we chose 500 MHz as the carrier
frequency. Note that 500 MHz is in the UHF TV band, so
there tends to be strong interference from nearby TV stations,
and the mitigation of such interference is the main focus of
this paper. The OOK system has 20 MHz bandwidth. The
OOK receiver consists of a bandpass lter which removes
interference outside the desired bandwidth, an energy detector,
and a comparator.

Fig. 3.

The CSS-DBPSK system block diagram.

frequency bands. A UWB communication system is characterized by wide bandwidth and increased throughput. Chirp
spread spectrum which is a kind of spread spectrum techniques
uses chirp signals which have variable carrier frequency as
shown in Fig. 2. A CSS system requires a band pass lter
at the receiver [5]-[8]. The advantages of the CSS method
include low power consumption, robustness to interference
signal, multipath fading, and Doppler effect [7].
In the OOK communication systems, digital data 1 and
0 correspond to on and off keying of carrier signal. In the
DBPSK, digital data 1 and 0 correspond to analog pulses
1 and -1, respectively. When we combine the CSS method
with the DBPSK modulation, the robustness to interference
can be improved. Fig. 3 illustrates the CSS-DBPSK transmitter
and receiver structure. The DBPSK signal is demodulated by
multiplying 1-bit delayed version of the received signal to the
received signal itself, and the bit decision can be made by a
comparator. The receiver of a CSS-DBPSK system basically
consists of a band pass lter, a mixer, and a demodulator
(decision step). The error performance of the DBPSK system
is better than that of the OOK system, but the synchronization
(symbol timing) for the DBPSK system is more complex.

B. Chirp Spread Spectrum - Differential Binary Phase Shift

Keying (CSS-DBPSK)
UWB communication is dened as a wireless communication system using bandwidth larger than 20 % of center
frequency or larger than 500MHz bandwidth. Since UWB
signal uses low power, a UWB communication system does
not interfere with other communication systems in the same

C. Chirp Spread Spectrum On-Off Keying (CSS-OOK)

In a capsule endoscopy wireless system, it is hard to use
sophisticated channel estimation because of low complexity
receiver implementation. There are modulation systems which

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Fig. 4.

The CSS-OOK system block diagram.

do not need channel estimation such as DBPSK systems and

OOK systems [9][10]. Although the OOK modulation has
worse BER performance than the DBPSK modulation, it can
be implemented with a low complexity receiver. One disadvantage of the OOK modulation is that it is more susceptible to
narrow band interference such as TV signals. To alleviate the
interference problem, we propose a new modulation scheme
which combines chirp spread spectrum and OOK, and it is
called chirp spread spectrum on-off keying (CSS-OOK). The
CSS-OOK communication system structure is shown in Fig.
4. In the CSS-OOK system, chirp signal is transmitted when
the data is 1, and nothing is transmitted when the data is
0. The receiver structure of the CSS-OOK system is similar
to that of the plain OOK system except that the band pass
lter has wider bandwidth to cover the increased bandwidth
due to the CSS usage. The CSS-OOK system is robust to
narrow band interference because of the increased bandwidth.
In summary, the CSS-OOK system is a compromising solution
that achieves both low receiver complexity and robustness to
interference.
III. H UMAN B ODY C HANNEL M ODELS

Fig. 5. (a) Input pulse, and (b) output pulse at the distance of 8 cm from
the body surface to compute human body channels.

To model human body channel is not simple because the

material is nonhomogeneous. Fig. 5 shows the input and the
output signals using nite difference time domain (FDTD)
method with a human body channel [11][12][13]. The input
signal is a differential Gaussian pulse applied to the small
intestine of human body model. The change of received
electric eld is measured with respect to the time in these
gures. In the model, it is assumed that the electric eld is
measured at the distance of 8 cm from the body surface. As
the distance increases, the signal amplitude weakens, and the
signal shape tends to be more distorted. The viscera structure
is different depending on the location, so the amplitude and
the shape of the received signal may vary depending on the
location even at the same distance. The impulse response of the
human body channel is obtained by applying FFT and IFFT
on the input and output signals, and it is shown in Fig. 6.
First, we convert the input and the output signal to frequency
domain data. By dividing the output spectrum by the input
spectrum, we obtain the frequency response of the channel.
The frequency response is converted back to time domain via

inverse Fourier transform, and the end result is the impulse

response of the human body channel. The time domain channel
response will be applied to the simulations.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
A. Simulations with human body channels
We compare OOK, CSS-DBPSK, and CSS-OOK in terms
of BER performance with interference. These interference
signals have narrow bandwidth. A UWB system typically uses
unlicensed band, so the UWB signal often overlaps with the
frequency bands of other existing systems. In the eld measurements, narrowband interferences are detected at around
500 MHz, and they have irregular amplitude, bandwidth, and
center frequency depending on the time of measurements. It
was found out that the narrowband interference originated
from UHF TV broadcasting stations. For our simulations,
we use 3 kinds of narrowband interferences. The rst is a
combination of two narrowband interferences (type A), each

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Human Channel Model

10

ChirpDBPSK
ChirpOOK
OOK
ChirpDBPSK + Interference A
ChirpOOK + Interference A
OOK + Interference A

10

BER

10

10

10

10

12

14
16
Eb/N0

18

20

22

24

Fig. 8. BER comparison with a human body channel with the distance of 8
cm from the body surface.
Fig. 6.

The human body channel impulse response.

to that, a realistic human body channel model is used, and

it causes additional degradation from the AWGN theoretical
BER.
In Fig. 8, we compare the BER performance of the three
modulation schemes with the interference type A using the
human body channel with the distance of 8 cm from the skin,
where the signal to interference power ratio is about 11.5
dB. The solid lines are the BER results without interference,
and the dotted lines are BER results with interference. With
narrowband interference, the CSS-DBPSK has the best BER
performance because the OOK modulation is more susceptible
to the narrowband interference. It is observed that the CSSOOK modulation performs better than the OOK modulation
with the interference type A in terms of BER. As CSS
systems use wideband signal, when parts of the frequency band
are contaminated by narrowband interference, the signal can
still be demodulated using the non-contaminated parts of the
frequency band.
The BER comparison with the interference type B is shown
in the Fig. 9, where the signal to interference power ratio is
about 11 dB. The CSS-DBPSK has the best BER performance.
It is also observed that the CSS-OOK modulation performs
better than the OOK modulation with the interference type B
in terms of BER. In Fig. 10, we have the BER results for the
interference type C with respect to interference to noise power.
The /0 of this simulation is xed to 19 dB. As expected,
the CSS-DBPSK modulation also has the best performance in
the interference of type C. It is also observed in Fig. 10 that
the CSS-OOK scheme is more robust to interference than the
plain OOK scheme. For example, at the interference to noise
ratio of 10 dB, the BER of the OOK scheme is about 102 ,
and the BER of the CSS-OOK is below 103 .

one of which has 10MHz bandwidth. The second is 30MHz

narrowband interference (type B), and the third is 10 MHz
interference with variable power (type C). Fig. 7 shows the
spectrums of the three interference types. Type A is used
to model two narrowband interference channels. Type B and
C are used to check the robustness of the CSS modulation
with respect to wider interference bandwidth and variable
interference power, respectively.
Capsule endoscopic devices transmits data wirelessly
through human body. In our simulations, we used the human
body channel response obtained from the FDTD input and
output signals with the 3 interference models. The simulation
is done with 5 GHz sampling frequency and the bit rate is
20 Mbps. Chirp signals of CSS-DBPSK and CSS-OOK have
spreading factor of 5, and the bandwidth is 100 MHz which
is located in 450-550 MHz. We use passband simulations
instead of baseband simulations in order to emulate the
low-complexity hardware which consists of a bandpass lter
(BPF) and an energy (power) detector. Since the passband
simulations are used, the distortion due to the BPF bandwidth
is unavoidable, and the BER performance may get degraded
compared to the theoretical AWGN performance. In addition

B. Phase offset sensitivity of the CSS-DBPSK modulation

In the previous BER simulation results, the CSS-DBPSK
modulation has better BER performance than the CSS-OOK

Fig. 7. Three narrowband interferences: (a) Type A, (b) Type B, and (c)
Type C.

94

Human Channel Model

10

10

ChirpDBPSK
ChirpOOK
OOK
ChirpDBPSK + Interference B
ChirpOOK + Interference B
OOK + Interference B

10

ChirpDBPSK
ChirpDBPSK /5 error
ChirpDBPSK 2/5 error
ChirpDBPSK 3/5 error
ChirpDBPSK error
ChirpDBPSK 8/5 error
ChirpDBPSK 9/5 error
ChirpDBPSK 2 error
OOK

10

BER

BER

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

12

14
16
Eb/N0

18

20

22

24

Fig. 11.

10
12
Eb/N0(dB)

14

16

18

The CSS-DBPSK BER results with non-ideal phase offset (miss).

Fig. 9. BER comparison with a human body channel with narrowband

interference type B

at the center frequency of 500 MHz. It is observed that phase

offset (miss) as small as 1 ns (which corresponds to ) causes
signicant degradation. Although the CSS-DBPSK scheme is
the best in terms of BER with ideal synchronization, it is
difcult to implement the receiver only with low complexity
analog circuits because it is difcult to achieve precise timing.
On the other hand, the CSS-OOK scheme is an attractive
alternative scheme because it is simpler to implement, and
it does not require complex digital processing.

Human Channel Model

10

10

BER

10

V. C ONCLUSIONS

10

10

In this paper, we proposed two CSS based schemes to

mitigate narrowband interference in capsule endoscopy systems, which is a key contribution of this paper. Since the
CSS based schemes use wideband signals, they are robust to
narrowband interference. Among the 3 schemes (CSS-DBPSK,
CSS-OOK, and OOK) that we compared, the CSS-DBPSK
scheme performs the best in terms of BER, but its disadvantage
is that the receiver implementation is complex because of the
precise synchronization requirement. For the implementation
of capsule endoscopy systems, the CSS-OOK scheme is a
practical compromise between interference mitigation performance and receiver complexity.

ChirpDBPSK + Interference C
ChirpOOK + Interference C
OOK + Interference C

10

15

20
25
30
Interference to Noise Power

35

40

45

Fig. 10. BER comparison with a human body channel with respect to the
interference to noise power.

modulation and the OOK modulation. However, the CSSDBPSK modulation has higher receiver complexity than the
others. In addition to that, the receiver of the CSS-DBPSK
system need to delay the data by 1 bit for demodulation. It
is difcult to achieve precise synchronization, and a slight
phase offset may cause signicant BER degradation. The
multiplication of the received signal with the 1-bit delayed
signal requires accuracy within a few nano seconds. Since we
are assuming a simple receiver architecture without baseband
(digital) processing and phase locked loop (PLL), timing and
phase synchronization is critical for the BER performance especially when the data rate is high. The BER degradation with
respect to phase offset from the ideal 1-bit delay in the receiver
is shown in Fig. 11. Note that 2 (phase error or offset)
corresponds to the period (2 ns) of the carrier signal (CSS)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported in part by Basic Science
Research Program (2010-0013397) and Mid-career Researcher
Program (2010-0027155) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology, Seoul R&BD Program (JP091007,
0423-20090051), Power Generation & Electricity Delivery of
the KETEP grant funded by the Korea government Ministry
of Knowledge Economy (No. 2011T100100151), the Institute
of New Media & Communications (INMAC), and the BK21
program. The authors would like to thank Mr. Kihyun Kim,
and Prof. Sangwook Nam for their help in preparing this paper.

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