Ultra wideband antenna diversity techniques for on/off-body radio channel characterisation

Abstract

Diversity is powerful tool for combat fading. This paper presents experimental investigations and comparison of ultra wideband antenna diversity technique for on-body and off-body radio propagation channels. Diversity gain (DG) is calculated for five different channels namely: Access point (AP)/belt-to-head, AP/belt-to-chest, AP/belt-to-wrist, AP/belt-to-ankle and AP/belt-to-back with the subject performing realistic movements of different nature in an indoor environment. Results showed that almost 50% improvement in DG is obtained for off-body case as compared to on-body case, which shows the usefulness of UWB off-body diversity for body centric wireless communications.