Joint Antenna and Channel Modelling for Communication in Metallic Kitchen Environments

This paper presents a study on the joint antenna and channel modelling for communication in metallic kitchen environments. It allows characterizing and optimizing the wireless communication between the cooking pot and the kitchen hood in a smart kitchen where data acquired by sensors in the pot is used to control the kitchen hob and hood. The delay and path loss characteristics of the wireless channel are obtained from channel sounding measurements. The influence of the metallic pot on the antenna is taken into account by performing measurements with and without pot. The channel sounding measurements show a small delay spread caused by reflections on the hob and hood, and path loss values that are close to the free space path loss for a Line-of-Sight setup but up to 30 dB higher for different setups. The measurements with pot show lower losses, due to a more directive radiation pattern of the antenna when placed next to metal. Path loss and small scale fading margins are used for link budget calculations.