Abstract
In this paper the influence of an example indoor environment on narrowband radio channel path loss for body area networks operating around 2.4 GHz is investigated using computer simulations and on-site measurements. In contrast to other similar studies, the simulation model included both a numerical human body phantom and its environment—room walls, floor and ceiling. As an example, radio signal attenuation between two different configurations of transceivers with dipole antennas placed in a direct vicinity of a human body (on-body scenario) is analyzed by computer simulations for several types of reflecting environments. In the analyzed case the propagation environments comprised a human body and office room walls. As a reference environment for comparison, free space with only a conducting ground plane, modelling a steel mesh reinforced concrete floor, was chosen. The transmitting and receiving antennas were placed in two on-body configurations chest–back and chest–arm. Path loss vs. frequency simulation results obtained using Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method and a multi-tissue anthropomorphic phantom were compared to results of measurements taken with a vector network analyzer with a human subject located in an average-size empty cuboidal office room. A comparison of path loss values in different environments variants gives some qualitative and quantitative insight into the adequacy of simplified indoor environment model for the indoor body area network channel representation.
Highlights
In this paper the influence of an example indoor environment on narrowband radio channel path loss for body area networks operating around 2.4 GHz is investigated using computer simulations and on-site measurements
In the paper the influence of the indoor environment on the signal attenuation in body area networks was studied for several simple antenna and wall geometries in the 2.4 GHz Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band
In contrast to many other similar studies, the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). Simulation domain included both a numerical body phantom and the surrounding room walls, floor and ceiling which is more realistic than free-space approach to Body Area Networks (BANs) channel modeling
Summary
Wireless Body Area Networks (BANs) use radio transmitters which can be located inside of the human body (implants), on the body, or in its proximity. An in-depth simulation based analysis of the coupling between body mounted antennas using computational electrodynamics methods, such as the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method and numerical phantoms, can be found in literature, e.g., [4,5,6,7] Some of these considerations focus on an unrealistic case of BAN operating in free space and the influence of reflecting objects in the environment around the human body is neglected [6,7]. The model consists of both a human body phantom with a pair of transmitting and receiving antennas and several examples of the surrounding multipath environment, including walls, ceiling, and floor In this investigation the ISM 2.4 GHz band is considered. XFdtd® (10 mm voxels) and antenna location: 1–chest, 2–back, 3–arm
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