A Measurement-Based Model of BMI Impact on UWB Multi-Antenna PAN and B2B Channels

• Published in: IEEE transactions on communications Vol. 66; no. 12; pp. 6494 - 6510
• Main Authors: Sangodoyin, Seun, Molisch, Andreas F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.12.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antenna measurements; Body mass index; Body size; body-to-body communication; Channel capacity; Channels; Correlation coefficients; Frequency measurement; Gain measurement; MIMO communication; Narrowband; Networks; Parameters; personal area network; Personal area networks; Propagation; Propagation channel; Shadow mapping
• ISSN: 0090-6778; 1558-0857
• DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2018.2859991

Personal area networks (PANs) and body-to-body (B2B) networks are of increasing importance for applications ranging from medical monitoring to entertainment. The performance of such networks is largely determined by the propagation channels in which they operate, and which in turn are strongly impacted by the human body/bodies in these channels. It is thus essential to quantify the impact of different body types/sizes on the channel characteristics for PAN and B2B channels. In this paper, we present an extensive propagation channel measurement campaign in the 2-10 GHz frequency band for SIMO (single-input-multiple-output) PAN and MIMO (multiple-input-multiple-output) B2B channels. The measurements were done using 60 (for PAN) and 9 (B2B) human subjects, which had widely varying body mass index (BMI) values grouped into three categories. For each BMI category, parameters such as the average path gain, shadowing gain, root-mean-squared delay spread, channel spatial correlation coefficients, amplitude fading statistics, and channel capacity values were extracted for both PAN and B2B channels. Our analysis reveals considerable differences between these parameters for different BMI categories.