Uppsala, 7 June 2026
Probingon AB announces that a new peer-reviewed study validating the FAT-IBC platform has been published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal. The paper, authored by researchers at Uppsala University’s Microwaves in Medical Engineering Group, demonstrates a flexible wearable implementation of the Fat-tissue Intra-Body Communication system and reports its performance in human volunteer trials for the first time.
What the study demonstrates
The research team developed a compact, flexible U-shaped antenna, coated in biocompatible PDMS, operating at 2.45 GHz in the ISM band. The antenna was designed to couple directly into the subcutaneous fat layer, using the low-loss properties of adipose tissue as the signal propagation medium — the same physical principle that underlies all FAT-IBC implementations.
Performance was validated across three settings: numerical simulation on a three-layer tissue model, torso phantom measurements using both obese and athletic body-type phantoms, and live human volunteer trials conducted under ethical approval from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. The U-shaped Fat-IBC antenna consistently outperformed a standard Bluetooth Low Energy chip antenna in transmission coefficient and signal stability, particularly in subjects with thicker fat layers.
Specific Absorption Rate analysis confirmed a peak value of 0.3061 W/kg, well within the 1.6 W/kg limit set by IEEE safety standards, confirming the system’s suitability for continuous biomedical use.
Significance for the platform
This study is the second independent peer-reviewed publication validating FAT-IBC performance, joining the 92 Mb/s throughput result published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering in 2024. Where the earlier study established raw channel capacity using off-the-shelf WLAN hardware, this new paper advances the technology toward wearable deployment: flexible, body-conforming, biocompatible, and now validated on human subjects.
The human volunteer data is particularly significant. It demonstrates that the fat-tissue channel advantage holds under real physiological conditions and across different body compositions, not only in controlled phantom environments. It is also the first Fat-IBC study to include direct comparative benchmarking against BLE in a human trial context.
Together, the two publications establish FAT-IBC as a validated, safe, and implementable communication layer for body area networks — not a laboratory concept, but a platform with demonstrated real-world performance.
Commercialisation context
Probingon licenses FAT-IBC to medical device manufacturers as a communication infrastructure layer. The technology removes the colocation constraint in implantable systems, making distributed multi-node architectures possible for the first time. The wearable antenna validated in this study opens a pathway to applications beyond fully implanted devices, including hybrid systems where implanted nodes communicate with wearable interfaces across the fat channel.
The company is actively developing OEM licensing partnerships and is in advanced seed financing.
Acknowledgement
Probingon congratulates Associate Professor Robin Augustine, CTO and scientific principal investigator, and co-authors Bappaditya Mandal, Tarakeswar Shaw, Pramod K. B. Rangaiah, Laya Joseph, Arvind Selvan Chezhian, Roger L. Karlsson, and Maria Mani on the publication. Each study in this programme extends the validated evidence base that underpins the commercial case for FAT-IBC.
About Probingon AB
Probingon AB is a MedTech company based in Uppsala, Sweden, commercialising platform communication technology for implantable medical devices. The company operates as the commercial partner to Uppsala University’s Microwaves in Medical Engineering Group, translating validated research into licensable technology for the global neuromodulation market.
For partnership and investment enquiries, contact Mark Schneider, CEO:
Read the full study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-55490-0