Simulation-Based Scenario-Specific Channel Modeling for WBAN Cooperative Transmission Schemes

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are an emerging technology for realizing efficient healthcare and remote medicine for the aging society of the future. In order to improve the reliability of WBAN systems and support its various applications, channel modeling and performance evaluation are important. This paper proposes a simulation-based channel modeling for evaluating the performance of WBAN cooperative transmission schemes. The time series of path losses among seven on-body nodes are generated by the finite-difference time-domain method for seven body motions. The statistical parameters of the path loss for all the motions are also obtained. The generated path loss is then applied to the evaluation of the two-hop decode-and-forward relaying scheme, yielding an improvement in transmit power. From the evaluation of body motion, useful insights are obtained such as which relay links are more robust than others. Finally, the proposed approach is validated through comparison with a measurement-based approach.