Off-Body Spatial Diversity Reception Using Circular and Linear Polarization: Measurement and Modeling

• Published in: IEEE communications letters Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 209 - 212
• Main Authors: Cui, Peng-Fei, Lu, Wen-Jun, Yu, Yu, Xue, Bai, Zhu, Hong-Bo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; circular polarization; cross polarized discrimination; Delays; Diversity methods; equal gain combination (EGC); Fading channels; off-body; Receiving antennas; signal level model; Space diversity; Spatial diversity
• ISSN: 1089-7798; 1558-2558
• DOI: 10.1109/LCOMM.2017.2762324

A novel circular polarized (CP) spatial diversity reception scheme is proposed to mitigate the human-body-related fading in off-body communication. Compared with the typical linear polarized (LP) diversity receptions, it seems that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the root mean square delay spread, multi-path component numbers, and their variations over different persons and measured locations. Both the signal-level models of LP and CP diversity receptions which take the polarization misalignment into consideration are mathematically derived with the help of diversity gain and cross polarized discrimination gain factor. The equal-gain-combination signal levels for CP diversity reception are verified to be around 2.1 dB greater than the LP reception, if the polarization mismatch loss is removed. Furthermore, the great signal-level fluctuation caused by the polarization misalignment effect can be mitigated by introducing CP reception when comparing with LP one. The proposed scheme is expected to be useful for designing robust off-body communications.