Effects of location and room height on ultra wideband propagation around the human body

Abstract

Radio propagation has been intensively studied for recently-emerging wireless body area network (WBAN) applications. To facilitate high-speed WBAN, ultra wideband (UWB) is a promising technology because of its low power consumption and anti-multipath capabilities. The authors have focused UWB (typically 3.1 to 10.6 GHz) propagation measurements around the human body in various environments. A new UWB propagation loss model was proposed to take into consideration the impact of the room volume, based on the measurements through which subjects stood in the center of the rooms. The motivation of this present study is to examine the effects of a subject's position within a room and the ceiling height on UWB propagation characteristics. A measurement campaign of on-body UWB propagation was carried out. The results revealed that the positions within a room and the ceiling heights only slightly affected the UWB propagation losses, delay profiles, and propagation loss models.