Channel Modeling of UWB-Based Wireless Body Area Networks

Abstract

This paper presents channel measurements for wireless body area network (WBAN) and provides performance evaluation using the model derived from measurement and the model in the final document of the IEEE802.15.6 channel modeling subcommittee. We measure the radio propagation from 3.0GHz to 5.0GHz which falls in ultra-wideband (UWB) frequency range in an anechoic chamber and give out a static model. 10 positions for medical entertainment and sports application are chosen to conduct measurement on a fat body, a normal body and a thin body in order to compare different path loss of different types of body for Chinese people. Moreover, we compare the bit error ratio (BER) of a single carrier UWB (SC-UWB) system which employs different receiving policies such as rake, equalizer and channel coding. The results show that slimmer people cause less path loss in the valid distance from 100mm to 1000mm. The measured model we derived has less multi-path effect than that of the model in the final report given by IEEE802.15.6 channel modeling subcommittee. Even though, rake receiver, equalizer and channel coding are needed to get a satisfying system performance.