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

Abstract

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.