Physical-Statistical Channel Model for Off-Body Area Network

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 16; pp. 1516 - 1519
• Main Authors: Mohamed, Marshed, Cheffena, Michael, Moldsvor, Arild, Fontan, Fernando P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2017
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; Channel models; Data models; Fading channels; indoor propagation; Legged locomotion; off-body communication; Receivers; Reflection; time-varying channels; wireless body area network (WBAN); Wireless communication
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2016.2647323

In this letter, a physical-statistical-based channel model for off-body wireless communications is presented. The model utilizes a dynamic human walking model, which provides detailed description of the movement of the different body parts. The received signal is composed of a direct component, which might be subject to shadowing by the body parts, and a multipath component due to reflections from the environmental scatterers. The uniform theory of diffraction (UTD) is utilized to accurately calculate the time-varying shadowing and scattering effects of the direct signal due to the moving of body parts. A Rayleigh distribution is used to represent the multipath fading effects by the scatterers around the human body. The model is validated in terms of first- and second-order statistics using 2.36 GHz measurement data, showing good agreement.