IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 54, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2007
An Attempt to Model the Human Body as a
Communication Channel
Marc Simon Wegmueller*, Student Member, IEEE, Andreas Kuhn, Juerg Froehlich,
Michael Oberle, Student Member, IEEE, Norbert Felber, Niels Kuster, and Wolfgang Fichtner, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractUsing the human body as a transmission medium for
electrical signals offers novel data communication in biomedical
monitoring systems. In this paper, galvanic coupling is presented
as a promising approach for wireless intra-body communication
between on-body sensors. The human body is characterized as a
transmission medium for electrical current by means of numer-
ical simulations and measurements. Properties of dedicated tissue
layers and geometrical body variations are investigated, and dif-
ferent electrodes are compared. The new intra-body communica-
tion technology has shown its feasibility in clinical trials. Excellent
transmission was achieved between locations on the thorax with a
typical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 20 dB while the attenuation
increased along the extremities.
Index TermsBiomedical sensor, body area network, body
characterization as transmission medium, galvanic coupling,
intra-body communication, measurement system.
I. INTRODUCTION
RIVEN by the vision of transmitting data cable-free over
D and through the human body, several attempts have been
made to model the human body as electrical channel. Electronic
data transfer by capacitive and galvanic coupling have been
proposed by research and industry as a novel and promising
technology for ultralow-power wireless body local area net-
works [1]. Such a new wireless data communication technology
will offer substantially increased freedom for long-term risk
patients. On-body sensors in form of intelligent band-aids
monitor the human vital functions. Enabled by the intra-body
communication capability of every sensor, the recorded data
will be transferred wireless through the body within the net-
work of on-body communication sensor nodes. Eventually, one
single node, e.g., a central monitoring node or a wrist watch,
Manuscript received July 7, 2006; revised January 17, 2007. Asterisk indi-
cates corresponding author.
*M. S. Wegmueller is with the Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS), (ETH),
Hochstrasse 20, Zurich 8092, Switzerland (e-mail: mwegmuel@iis.ee.ethz.ch).
A. Kuhn is with the Automatic Control Laboratory (IfA), ETH Zurich, Zurich
8092, Switzerland.
J. Froehlich was with the Foundation for Research on Information Technolo-
gies in Society (ITIS), 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. He is now with the Elec-
tromagnetic Fields and Microwave Electronics Laboratory (IfH), ETH Zurich,
Zurich 8044, Switzerland.
M. Oberle is with the Schmid & Partner Engineering AG, CH-8004 Zurich,
Switzerland and with the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies
in Society (ITIS), 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
N. Felber and W. Fichtner are with the Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS),
ETH Zurich, Zurich 8092, Switzerland.
N. Kuster is with the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies
in Society (ITIS), 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBME.2007.893498
0018-9294/$25.00 2007 IEEE
1851
Fig. 1. Concept of transmission using the human body as electrical transmis-
sion channel.
is connected by a traditional wireless link, e.g., Blue Tooth,
to the remote hospital monitoring infrastructure. There, the
data will be displayed or stored in the patients record. Among
others, target applications are electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse
oximetry, or body temperature surveillance.
With the personal area network (PAN) [2], a first data com-
munication was realized. Different electrical coupling methods
have shown the potential of data communication through the
human body [3][5]. A further principle using electro-optic sen-
sors opened the field for signals up to several megahertz [6], [7].
All these systems used a fixed carrier frequency and showed the
feasibility of electrical signal propagation through the human
body.
Galvanic coupling was investigated by Oberle [8] and ana-
lyzed by Hachisuka et al. [9], [10]. The characterizations of the
human body and of identified differences between body parts
are shown in [11].
The concept of galvanic coupling is based on the signal
transfer that is established between transmitter and receiver
unit by coupling signal currents galvanically into the human
body. The signal is applied differentially over two transmitter
electrodes and received differentially by the two receiver elec-
trodes. The transmitter establishes a modulated electrical field
which is sensed by the receiver as shown in Fig. 1. The applied
current has a peak amplitude of 1 mA. This injected current
establishes a certain potential distribution in the human body.
This potential distribution can be described by finite-element
(FE) models. FE modeling was successfully used in other
applications where currents are injected into the human body.
In electrical impedance tomography (EIT) currents are injected
with the goal to detect the impedance distribution of human
tissues [12][15]. In functional electrical stimulation (FES),
models were used to find the parameters that have the biggest
influence on nerve activation during stimulation [16], [17].
In this paper, we use these techniques to better understand
the influences from the electrode size, joints, and electrode po-
sitions on signal attenuation. The human body is characterized
as a communication channel for electrical current transmission.
Numerical simulations for specific body parts are validated by
1852 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 54, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007
Fig. 2. Top left picture shows the arm model consisting of multiple layers with
the transmitter and the receiver electrodes. The other two pictures show the cur-
rent distribution in an axial and a longitudinal cut that is present during data
transmission. The black lines indicate the position of the cut.
in vivo measurements. Safety requirements have to be fulfilled
and optimal signal coupling is required [18]. Therefore, a highly
sophisticated measurement system is developed to apply gal-
vanically coupled currents to the human body. The versatile
system offers up to 1 mA maximum current amplitude between
10 kHz and 1 MHz. The injected current is 20 times below the
maximum allowed contact current [19]. Such a low-current ap-
proach has the potential for a data communication that is more
energy-saving than other wireless technologies. In clinical trials,
the feasibility of the new technology applied to further parts of
the human body is investigated.
The principle of galvanic coupling is explored by means of
numerical simulations and experiments described in Section II.
Measurement results of the electrical behavior of the human
body as well as simulations of geometry and dedicated tissue
parameters are presented in Section III. Finally, the conclusions
are given in Section IV.
II. METHODS
The objective of the study includes the analysis of the attenu-
ation and the distribution of the current in specific body regions.
A communication channel is described in terms of signal to
noise ratio (SNR), bit error rate (BER), phase shift, and signal
distortion. The most crucial factor for signal transmission
through body parts at low frequency is the attenuation caused
by geometrical dimensions and tissue properties. Therefore, the
attenuation is investigated by FE models and measurements on
the human body.
A. FE Model
In order to learn more about the influence of the human
anatomy on the signal propagation, a 3-D FE model, developed
for transcutaneous electrical stimulation [16], was applied
(Fig. 2).
The main interest was to assess the dependence of the atten-
uation factor on the following:
different tissue layer properties;
joints in between transmitter and receiver;
distance between transmitter and receiver;
size of transmitter and receiver electrodes.
The attenuation factor between the transmitter and the re-
ceiver electrodes was calculated using (1) where
denotes the voltage at the transmitter electrodes and
the voltage at the receiver electrodes
attenuation (1)
1) Geometry and Tissue Properties: The geometry of the
human upper arm was modeled by concentric cylinders rep-
resenting the skin thickness (1.5 mm), fat (8.5 mm), muscle
(27.5 mm), cortical bone (6 mm), and bone marrow (6.5 mm;
radius) layers. The circular electrodes were modeled by a vari-
able diameter adapted to the area of the electrodes used in the ex-
perimental measurements. The spacing was 5 cm for the trans-
mitter electrodes and 7 cm for the receiver electrodes as shown
in Fig. 1. Each tissue layer was described by a conductivity
and a relative permittivity . The anisotropy of the muscle was
assumed to be a factor of three. All other tissues were mod-
eled isotropically. The used properties of the different layers are
shown in Table I [20].
2) Equation and Stimulus: According to [21], inductive ef-
fects and wave propagation can be neglected in biological tis-
sues (quasistatic solution). Therefore, the electric and magnetic
fields are decoupled. For our application, only the electric field
is of interest. Maxwells equations can be simplified using the
continuity equation and the constitutive relations, leading to the
equation for the quasistatic electric field
(2)
A current-controlled harmonic waveform stimulus at four fre-
quencies (10 kHz, 100 kHz, 500 kHz, and 1 MHz) was used as
stimulus at the two transmitter electrodes. One of the transmitter
electrodes acts as a reference having zero potential.
3) FE Mesh: The mesh of 3-D elements and the simulations
of the potential distribution were produced with the commer-
cial electromagnetic analysis package (EMAG) from ANSYS,
Inc. (Canonsburg, PA) [22]. Mesh sizes were between 150 000
and 200 000 elements. At the boundary between skin and air,
the normal component of the electric field was set equal to zero
isolating the arm against the air. Influences of secondary fields
(outer fields) and the direct coupling between the electrodes
were neglected.
B. Experimental Methods
1) Clinical Trial: The study has been conducted with 20
subjects. The average age was 47.2 years, the standard devia-
tion 22.1 years, and half of the group was male, respectively,
female subjects. The trial has been approved by the Swiss Na-
tional Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethic (NEK-CNE,
Bern, Switzerland).
In order to assess the characteristics of different paths (ex-
tremities, thorax, and joints), the following test protocol has
been defined:
assessment of signal attenuation over frequency by
sweeping a sinusoidal signal;
WEGMUELLER et al.: ATTEMPT TO MODEL THE HUMAN BODY AS A COMMUNICATION CHANNEL 1853

TABLE I
CONDUCTIVITIES AND RELATIVE PERMITTIVITIES OF THE DIFFERENT TISSUES AT THE CORRESPONDING FREQUENCIES USED FOR THE SIMULATIONS

TABLE II
BLUE SENSOR ELECTRODE CHARACTERISTICS DEPENDING ON THE SIZE OF THEIR ACTIVE AREA

TABLE III
BODY POINTS AND SESSION CONFIGURATIONS

) were processed. During ECG recording, the measurement

Fig. 3. Measurement point distribution over the entire body.
system was active and no visible effect on the ECG of the
patients was observable.
2) Electrode Variations: In order to assess the coupling char-
measurement of coupling impedance of the channel (signal
acteristics of the different electrodes at various locations, the
current of 1 mA is forced and the resulting input voltage is
comparison was defined according to the test protocol of the
measured).
clinical trial. Based on these results, the two setups on the upper
The transmitter electrodes are attached at a distance of 5 cm
arm (from elbow to axillary ) and on the thorax (from
while the receiver electrodes were separated by 7 cm, or closer,
left to right body side ) were chosen for comparison of
depending on the body geometry. Since measurements per pa-
the various coupling strategies.
tient were restricted to 3 h, it was necessary to limit the number of
Different sizes of Blue Sensor electrodes are compared. The
different locations for transmission measurements. Fig. 3 shows
active area was cut into one half and one quarter of the original
those locations and Table III indicates the combinations of trans-
size. Measured values of the impedances are shown in Table II.
mitter and receiver points. The measurements are grouped into
the four sessions along the arm, through the thorax, along the leg,
and through the entire body. The index geometrical indicates a III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
wider separation of the receiver electrodes. In this case, the elec-
trodes are placed at diametrical sides of the thorax. Furthermore, A. Measurements on the Upper and Lower Arm
index implies a rotation of the two transmitter electrodes by Along the arm, the attenuation and characteristics of trans-
90 around the center of their connecting line. mitted signals change depending on location as shown in Fig. 4.
In separated sessions, measurements during treadmill ex- The lower arm acts as a stronger low-pass filter than the
posure (index ) and during ECG measurement (index upper arm . Attenuation over joints increases by
1854
Fig. 4. Attenuation in arm measurements: lower arm (A1A2), through elbow
joint (A2B 1), upper arm (B 1B 2), and from lower arm to axillary (A2B 2).
Fig. 5. Attenuation between arm locations B 1 and B 2, averaged over all pa-
4
tients, and range with minimum and maximum measurements.
an additional 3 dB. The low-pass characteristic between
differs from any other locations. Although the setup is compa-
rable in distance and coupling with several other locations, the
lower arm asks for a totally different reference model. This ef-
fect has not yet been confirmed by simulations.
Fig. 5 shows the average attenuation and standard deviation
among all patients with transmitter location and receiver .
This configuration represents a short-range communication path
along the extremities. The measurements show a wide range of
measured attenuation. Those variations are caused by different
factors such as the patients muscle, fat, and bone distribution.
This setup was modeled and simulated by a simplified cylin-
drical arm model and extended with further details, e.g., joint
models, confirming the measurements (Section III-B).
The attenuation measurements with different transmitter and
receiver electrode sizes are shown in Fig. 6. The size of the re-
ceiver electrodes has a negligible impact (results with index 44
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 54, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007
Fig. 6. Measurement and simulation results with different electrode sizes: at-
tenuation on the upper arm B 1 to B 2 using Blue Sensor electrodes (11: trans-
mitter and receiver 560 mm , 21: transmitter 280 mm and receiver 560 mm ,
41: transmitter 140 mm and receiver 560 mm , 44: transmitter and receiver
140 mm ).
Fig. 7. Attenuation at upper arm in measurements and simulations with trans-
mitter and receiver separated in distance of 5, 10, and 15 cm.
compared to 41) whereas the attenuation decreases with an in-
crease in size of the transmitter electrodes (41, 21 down to 11).
B. Dependency on Distance and Tissue Parameters in
Numerical Simulations
Figs. 7 and 8 show the simulated attenuation between the
transmitter and the receiver using (1) in dependence on distance
and tissue parameters. An example of the resulting current den-
sity distribution is shown in Fig. 2.
1) Influence From the Distance Between Transmitter and Re-
ceiver: A larger attenuation can be expected for increasing dis-
tances between the transmitter and the receiver. This was also
found in the simulations. On the arm model, an increase of 5 cm
in distance between transmitter and receiver leads to an increase
of the attenuation by 6 to 9 dB. As the simulations compared
well with the experiments (Fig. 7), one can conclude that the
WEGMUELLER et al.: ATTEMPT TO MODEL THE HUMAN BODY AS A COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
Fig. 8. Simulation results were obtained by changing the resistance of the dif-
ferent tissue types. It was found that the muscle short-circuits the current and
concentrates it at the transmitter electrodes due to its low resistance compared
with the other tissues.
Fig. 9. Rotational-symmetric model showing different sizes of joints; at the
bottom of the picture, cuts through the center of the cylinder are shown indi-
cating the locations of the different material properties. The biggest joint gave
an attenuation of additional 8 dB compared to no joint.
approximation using a cylinder model with multiple layers is ap-
propriate. A more detailed geometry with complex layer struc-
tures would not significantly improve the results.
2) Influence of the Electrode Size: The size of the receiver
electrode did not have an influence on the attenuation in sim-
ulation and experimental measurements. The influence of the
transmitter electrodes is shown in Fig. 6, for both the measure-
ments and simulations. Larger transmitter electrode sizes were
found to have lower attenuation.
3) Influence of Joints: The influence of joints of different size
was investigated with the rotational symmetric model shown in
Fig. 9. The model was developed such that no remeshing was
needed to investigate different joint sizes. Errors introduced by
different meshes would be crucial due to very small potential
differences at the receiver electrodes. Only the material prop-
erties of the volumes in the FE software had to be changed in
1855
Fig. 10. Attenuation of different body locations indexed with transmitter fol-
lowed by receiver location.
order to change the joint size. Using the presented model, the
influence of the FE mesh was the same for all configurations
tested. Three configurations are shown on the bottom of Fig. 9.
Larger joints resulted in higher attenuation factors. The biggest
joint gave an attenuation of additional 8 dB compared to the
model without a joint.
4) Sensitivity to Resistivity Changes of Selected Tissues:
The sensitivity of the tissue resistivities was investigated by
decreasing the resistivity of every tissue layer by a factor of
three. Changing the resistivity of the bone and the skin layer
(not the patch under the electrode) did not influence the attenu-
ation. Yet, changes in the resistivity of muscle and fat showed
an effect on the attenuation between transmitter and receiver as
shown in Fig. 8. A decrease of the muscle resistance by a factor
of three results in an increase of the attenuation of about 10 dB.
This clearly indicates that the muscle tissue short-circuits the
current in a way that it flows more localized between the two
transmitter electrodes. Therefore, the potential lines are more
concentrated at the transmitter and extend less to the receiver.
A decrease of the fat resistance leads to a lower attenuation
because a larger fraction of the current is kept in the fat layer
and does not penetrate into the muscle layer.
C. Measurements Results of Further Body Regions
The feasibility of the technology was evaluated within a clin-
ical trial. A wide variation of biometric and medical parame-
ters and their influence on electrical signal transmission were
investigated.
Measurements on the thorax yield results that are relatively
independent of the location and, in general, show reasonable
transmission strength in the range of 50 to 65 dB (Fig. 10).
Based on these measurements, a typical SNR of 20 dB was cal-
culated. According to [23], the maximum channel capacity will
be 130 kb/s with a channel bandwidth of 30 kHz. The attenua-
tion on arms and legs increases exponentially with distance. So,
transmission over large distances gets rather difficult using the
low amplitude of maximum 1 mA injected current. Especially,
joints act as an attenuator.
1856
Fig. 11. Attenuation from chest F to back H 2 averaged over all patients reg-
ular and during treadmill exposure.
While attenuation on the thorax is rather independent on the
location, the more important is the fact of geometrical orienta-
tion. The 90 of rotation deteriorates the signal detection and
results in an attenuation difference of more than 20 dB (Fig. 10
comparing the recorded signal with index ).
Interestingly, measurements under the impact of body activity
on a treadmill have not shown any degradation. In fact, the more
activity there is, the better the coupling and the more stable the
signal transmission become. This effect was also indicated by
the numerical simulations using the combined skin layer model.
Fig. 11 shows an average attenuation of 52 dB when applying
the signal between chest and back . The standard deviation
is lower than the results obtained on the extremities (Fig. 5).
IV. CONCLUSION
Galvanic coupling is a promising approach for intra-body
communication over a frequency range from 10 kHz to 1 MHz.
The FE simulations, investigating the influence by geometry and
tissue parameters, showed that an increase in distance of 5 cm
between transmitter and receiver at the arm increases the attenu-
ation by 6 to 9 dB. Joints can increase the attenuation by up to 8
dB. Larger joints resulted in higher attenuation factors. The size
of the receiver electrodes does not have an influence on the atten-
uation. However, larger transmitter electrodes showed a lower
attenuation. The sensitivity analysis of the different tissue prop-
erties indicated that a decrease of the muscle resistance results
in an increase of the attenuation which confirms that the current
is more localized between the two transmitter electrodes. A de-
crease of the fat resistance leads to a lower attenuation because
a larger fraction of the current is kept in the fat layer and does
not penetrate the muscle layer.
Clinical trials showed the feasibility of the new technology to
transmit data through the human body. With the proposed mea-
surement system, dedicated body parts are characterized. High
variations of the transmission attenuation have been observed
at different locations of the body. Especially, the thorax showed
excellent transmission characteristics with a typical SNR of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 54, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007
20 dB while the extremities and joints lowered the quality of
transmission over larger distance. Improvements have been
seen during body activity. Therefore, galvanic coupling is a
potential communication technology for sensor application on
the thorax and for short distances on the extremities.
In the future, the proposed measurement system will be
miniaturized in terms of the electronic circuitry size with the
goal of realizing a data transmission based on galvanic cou-
pling. Intra-body communication will be used in a distributed
on-body sensor network for biomedical monitoring of vital
functions allowing wireless data transfer from ECG, pulse
oximetry, or temperature sensors to a central monitoring unit.
In a future study, the capabilities of this technology for implant
communication will be investigated separately.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. med. O. Hess and
cand. med. A. Lehner at the Insel University Hospital, Bern,
Switzerland, for conducting the clinical trials.
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Marc Simon Wegmueller (S05) was born in Bern,
Switzerland, in 1977. He received the Diploma de-
gree from the ETH Zurich, Zurich, Zurich, Switzer-
land, in 2002, where currently, he is working toward
the Dr. sc. tech. degree.
After an internship with Miromico AG, Zurich,
Switzerland, in the field of vital monitoring systems
and ASIC integration, he joined the Integrated Sys-
tems Laboratory (IIS), ETH Zurich, as a Research
Assistant in 2003. His research interests include the
design of very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits
and systems and digital signal processing for medical communications.
Andreas Kuhn was born in Uster, Switzerland, in
June 1979. In 2004, he received the M.Sc. degree in
information technology and electrical engineering
from ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, where
currently, he is working towards the Dr. sc. tech.
degree at the Automatic Control Laboratory in the
Electrical Stimulation Group.
His main research interest is the modeling of
transcutaneous electrical stimulation and the exper-
imental validation.
Juerg Froehlich received the M.S. and Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from the ETH Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland, in 1990 and 1997, respectively.
In 1998, he joined the Institute of Operations
Research at the University of Zurich, Zurich,
Switzerland, where he developed a simulation
platform for multistage stochastic programming
problems. In 2000, he joined the Foundation for
Research on Information Technologies in Society
(ITIS), Zurich, Switzerland, as a Project Leader for
Computational Tools and Risk Assessment. In May
2004, he was promoted to Associate Director of ITIS. Since November 2005,
he has been with the Laboratory of Fields and Waves, ETH Zurich. His research
activities cover computational tools for electromagnetics, applications of
electromagnetics in biology and medicine, and technology and risk assessment
of wireless technologies.
1857
Michael Oberle (S95) was born in Mannheim, Ger-
many, in 1965. He graduated from the Electrical En-
gineering Department, University of Karlsruhe, Karl-
sruhe, Germany, in 1993 and received the Ph.D. de-
gree in electrical engineering from the ETH Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland, in 2002.
He was a Cofounder and CEO of Miromico, a
Zurich-based ASIC engineering company. Since
2005, he has been with Schmid & Partner Engineering
and the Foundation for Research on Information
Technologies in Society (ITIS), Zurich, Switzerland,
where he is heading the medical technology divisions. His general fields of
research have been low-power low-voltage analog and mixed-signal integrated
circuits for biomedical sensors, wireless telemetry, and space technology.
Norbert Felber was born in Trimbach, Switzerland,
in 1951. He received the Dipl. Phys. (M.Sc.) degree
from the ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, in 1976
and the Dr. sc. nat. (Ph.D.) degree from the Labora-
tory of Applied Physics, ETH Zurich, in 1986.
He was a Research Assistant at the Laboratory of
Applied Physics, ETH Zurich. In 1987, he joined the
Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS), ETH Zurich,
where he is currently a Research Associate and
Lecturer in the field of very large scale integration
(VLSI) design and test. His research interests are
in telecommunications, digital signal processing (digital filters, audio, video,
pattern recognition, and image processing), optoelectronics, measurement
techniques, and device characterization.
Niels Kuster was born in 1957 in Switzerland. He
received the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in
1991 in electrical engineering from the ETH Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland.
In 1993, he was elected Professor at the Depart-
ment of Electrical Engineering, ETH Zurich. He
was an Invited Professor at the Electromagnetics
Laboratory, Motorola Inc., FL, in 1992 and at the
Metropolitan University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in
1998. In 1999, he was appointed the Director of the
Foundation for Research on Information Technolo-
gies in Society (ITIS), Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests are currently
focused on the area of reliable on/in-body wireless communications (mea-
surement technology, computational electrodynamics for evaluation of close
near-fields in complex environments, safe and reliable wireless communication
links, development of exposure setups, and quality control for bioexperiments).
Wolfgang Fichtner (M79SM84F90) received
the Dipl. Ing. degree in physics and the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from the Technical
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, in 1974 and
1978, respectively.
From 1975 to 1978, he was an Assistant Pro-
fessor at the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Technical University of Vienna. From 1979 to 1985,
he was with the AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray
Hill, NJ. Since 1985, he has been a Professor and
Head of the Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS),
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. In October 1999, he became Chairman of
the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department, ETH
Zurich. In 1993, he founded Integrated Systems Engineering AG (ISE ), a
company in the field of technology computer-aided design (CAD), which was
acquired by Synopsys, Inc., in 2004. His research activities cover physics-based
simulation of semiconductor devices and technologies in microelectronics and
optoelectronics, physical characterization and electronic measurement in deep
submicrometer and nanotechnologies, as well as design and test of digital
integrated circuits.
Dr. Fichtner is a member of the Swiss National Academy of Engineering. In
2000, he was the recipient of the IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award for his contri-
butions to technology CAD.