Mobility’s Influence on System Loss in Off-Body BAN Scenarios

In this paper, a measurement campaign for off-body communications in an indoor environment is investigated for a set of on-body antennas. The channel impulse response was measured with the user approaching and departing from an off-body fixed antenna using two user dynamics, standing at fixed positions and walking. The processing of the measurement data allowed to evaluate system loss statistics. Different antenna configurations are classified in terms of mobility and visibility depending on the on-body antenna placement. A dependence on distance is found for the antennas with the lowest mobility (chest and head), while no significant dependence is found for the antennas with the highest mobility (arms and legs). Regarding the standard deviation of system loss, higher values are found in walking scenarios (above 1.0 dB) compared to the standing ones (below 0.6 dB) showing a clear dependence on mobility.