Comprehensive design and propagation study of a compact dual band antenna for healthcare applications

In this paper, a dual band planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) has been investigated for cooperative on- and off-body communications. Free space and on-body performance parameters like return loss, bandwidth, radiation pattern and efficiency of this antenna are shown and investigated. The on- and off-body radio propagation channel performance at 2.45 GHz and 1.9 GHz have been investigated, respectively. Experimental investigations are performed both in the anechoic chamber and in an indoor environment. The path loss exponent has been extracted for both on- and off-body radio propagation scenarios. For on-body propagation, the path loss exponent is 2.48 and 2.22 in the anechoic chamber and indoor environment, respectively. The path loss exponent is 1.27 for off-body radio propagation situation. For on-body case, the path loss has been characterized for ten different locations on the body at 2.45 GHz, whereas for off-body case radio channel studies are performed for five different locations at 1.9 GHz. The proposed antenna shows a good on- and off-body radio channel performance

Mathematical modeling of ultra wideband in vivo radio channel

This paper proposes a novel mathematical model for an in vivo radio channel at ultra-wideband frequencies (3.1–10.6 GHz), which can be used as a reference model for in vivo channel response without performing intensive experiments or simulations. The statistics of error prediction between experimental and proposed model is RMSE = 5.29, which show the high accuracy of the proposed model. Also, the proposed model was applied to the blind data, and the statistics of error prediction is RMSE = 7.76, which also shows a reasonable accuracy of the model. This model will save the time and cost on simulations and experiments, and will help in designing an accurate link budget calculation for a future enhanced system for ultra-wideband body-centric wireless systems

Correlated shadowing and fading characterization of MIMO off-body channels by means of multiple autonomous on-body nodes

In off-body communication systems low-cost and compact transceivers are important for realistic applications. An autonomous off-body wireless node was designed and integrated onto a textile antenna. Channel measurements were performed for an indoor non line-off-sight 4x2 MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) link using four off-body transmitting nodes and two similar fixed receiving nodes. The channel behavior is characterized as Rayleigh fading with lognormal shadowing and is fitted to a model determining fading and shadowing correlation matrices. The physics of the propagation is captured accurately by the model which is further used to simulate a link using diversity by means of Selection Combining, as implemented on the wireless nodes. The performance of measured and simulated links is compared in terms of outage probability level. The measurements and analysis confirm that the correlated shadowing and fading model is relevant for realistic off-body networks employing diversity by means of Selection Combining

Channel estimation and transmit power control in wireless body area networks

Wireless body area networks have recently received much attention because of their application to assisted living and remote patient monitoring. For these applications, energy minimisation is a critical issue since, in many cases, batteries cannot be easily replaced or recharged. Reducing energy expenditure by avoiding unnecessary high transmission power and minimising frame retransmissions is therefore crucial. In this study, a transmit power control scheme suitable for IEEE 802.15.6 networks operating in beacon mode with superframe boundaries is proposed. The transmission power is modulated, frame-by-frame, according to a run-time estimation of the channel conditions. Power measurements using the beacon frames are made periodically, providing reverse channel gain and an opportunistic fade margin, set on the basis of prior power fluctuations, is added. This approach allows tracking of the highly variable on-body to on-body propagation channel without the need to transmit additional probe frames. An experimental study based on test cases demonstrates the effectiveness of the scheme and compares its performance with alternative solutions presented in the literature

On-Body Channel Measurement Using Wireless Sensors

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Experimental study of on-body radio channel performance of a compact ultra wideband antenna

In this paper, on-body radio channel performance of a compact ultra wideband (UWB) antenna is investigated for body-centric wireless communications. Measurement campaigns were first done in the chamber and then repeated in an indoor environment for comparison. The path loss parameter for eight different on-body radio channels has been characterized and analyzed. In addition, the path loss was modeled as a function of distance for 34 different receiver locations for propagation along the front part of the body. Results and analysis show that, compared with anechoic chamber, a reduction of 16.34% path loss exponent is noticed in indoor environment. The antenna shows very good on-body radio channel performance and will be a suitable candidate for future efficient and reliable body-centric wireless communications

Characterization of the on-body path Loss at 2.45 GHz and energy efficient WBAN design for dairy cows

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide promising applications in the healthcare monitoring of dairy cows. The characterization of the path loss (PL) between on-body nodes constitutes an important step in the deployment of a WBAN. In this paper, the PL between nodes placed on the body of a dairy cow was determined at 2.45 GHz. Finite-difference time domain simulations with two half-wavelength dipoles placed 20 mm above a cow model were performed using a 3-D electromagnetic solver. Measurements were conducted on a live cow to validate the simulation results. Excellent agreement between measurements and simulations was achieved and the obtained PL values as a function of the transmitter-receiver separation were well fitted by a lognormal PL model with a PL exponent of 3.1 and a PL at reference distance ( 10 cm) of 44 dB. As an application, the packet error rate ( PER) and the energy efficiency of different WBAN topologies for dairy cows (i.e., single-hop, multihop, and cooperative networks) were investigated. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes decrease the PER and increase the optimal payload packet size. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes increase the optimal payload packet size and improve the energy efficiency by 30%

The Triangle Metric: Fast Link Quality Estimation for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (Invited Paper)

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