Transient Characteristics of Wearable Antennas and Radio Propagation Channels for Ultrawideband Body-Centric Wireless Communications

This paper presents transient characterization of ultrawideband (UWB) body-worn antennas and on-body radio propagation channels for body-centric wireless communications. A novel miniaturized CPW-fed tapered slot antenna is proposed and used for transient measurements of UWB radio channels for body area network (BAN) and personal area network (PAN) scenarios. Unlike conventional UWB CPW-fed antennas, the proposed antenna employs two diverging tapered slots to provide smooth and stable impedance matching. Fidelity analysis is applied to evaluate the time-domain behavior of body-worn antennas and it is found that average fidelity obtained is 88% and 86% for the conventional coplanar waveguide fed antenna and the tapered slot antenna, respectively. However, the tapered slot antenna shows a significant size reduction and hence is suited for body-centric wireless communications.