Undergraduates seeking for opportunities to lead private research from its inception to presentation have only a few programs to choose from. The Undergraduate Research Participation (URP) is a program provided by KAIST where undergraduates, either singular or in a team, are funded to attend laboratories and research any topic of their choice. The program length varies from one to two semesters and requires that the fruit of research be presented to numerous professors in the field; the presentation becomes the standard by which the research is rated. The KAIST Herald met an undergraduate who came on top of all the participants this season telling us about his research and experience.

Hi, my name is Jang Jaeeun from the entering class of 2009, majoring in electrical engineering. I participated in the 2013 Winter/Spring URP program for one semester with a colleague, Lee Jaehyuk from the class of 2010 who is currently on leave, in Professor Hoi-Jun Yoo’s lab.

Well, my colleague and I chose a topic independently. The title of our research topic is “802.15.6 Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN)  Standard Compatible Sensor Network Platform.” 802.15.6 WBAN is one of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) network standards, and it includes Human Body Communication (HBC) Physical Layer (PHY). In detail, with HBC PHY inside of  WBAN, we developed a more user-friendly sensor network platform to gather bio-medical signals from the human body.

Having a low-power requirement is very important for wearable healthcare, and HBC is especially energy-efficient in comparison to other communication standards. By using contact nodes attached to the skin that send modulated electrical signals directly to the body, HBC avoids the use of antennas and electromagnetic signals, which is less efficient because of the shading effect from the water that comprises most of the body.

Yes it did. HBC occur on the chip level, the variants of which have been developed separately. The work was to bring it all together and make it more user-friendly with all the peripheral, making the devices more accessible for research processes. In summary, the successful results showed that multiple sensor nodes are supported, all in a standard compatible modem, with a more intuitive graphical user interface. Having the sensor nodes standard compatible is very important because nodes only sense analog information. For the data to be usable, the main hub needs a standard by which the data is modulated so that the data intake can be used.

Heck, nothing goes as planned. To construct any system code, one needs to debug any potential errors. One wrong node or line, the system is in error. The system concerns itself for the human body, which is very capricious. If you write “hello world” on the computer, it turns up “hello world,” but even if the same thing happens multiple times, the body can respond in different ways. Also, people need to understand that these are the works of undergraduates; undergraduate education is surprisingly inadequate, and studies on the topic needs to happen in parallel with the progress. If something goes wrong, we do not know what the problem is and can only learn how to handle it from mistakes. It is like a car without steering wheels. Not knowing where to look, one often finds oneself staring at the wrong places, sometimes too easy, sometimes already done, and sometimes seemingly meaningless.

Definitely. The program is meaningful because it is done at an undergraduate level. It is not particularly purpose-oriented nor preparatory for coming research experiences, but having done it does help in the future.