Experimental Characterization and Statistical Analysis of the Pseudo-Dynamic Ultrawideband On-Body Radio Channel

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 10; pp. 748 - 751
• Main Authors: Abbasi, Q. H., Sani, A., Alomainy, A., Yang Hao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 2011; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; Belt conveyors; Channels; Delay; Frequency measurement; Loss measurement; Movements; On-body communications; Radio; Receivers; second-order statistics; Spectra; Statistics; Ultrawideband; ultrawideband (UWB); Wireless communication; Wrist
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2011.2162811

This letter investigates the effect of body movements on the ultrawideband (UWB) on-body radio channel. A measurement campaign was performed considering four different body-links, namely: belt-to-head, belt-to-chest, belt-to-wrist, and belt-to-ankle, with the subject performing movements of different nature, in order to cover a wide range of scenarios. Transient and spectral characteristics were extracted from the measured channel data. The post-measurement analysis concluded that the normal distribution provides the best fitting for the path loss, while the root mean square delay is better modeled with a log-normal distribution. In addition to first-order statistics, this letter analyzes and discusses second-order channel parameters such as level crossing rate, average fade duration, and fade probability for the proposed on-body propagation links.