Berkeley Wireless Research Center, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA.
Waves Research Group, IMEC, Department of Information Technology, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
Sensors (Basel). 2018 Nov 27;18(12):4165. doi: 10.3390/s18124165.
While there exists a wide variety of radio frequency (RF) technologies amenable for usage in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), which have been studied separately before, it is currently still unclear how their performance compares in true on-body scenarios. In this paper, a single reference on-body scenario-that is, propagation along the arm-is used to experimentally compare six distinct RF technologies (between 420 MHz and 2.4 GHz) in terms of path loss. To further quantify on-body path loss, measurements for five different on-body scenarios are presented as well. To compensate for the effect of often large path losses, two mitigation strategies to (dynamically) improve on-body links are introduced and experimentally verified: beam steering using a phased array, and usage of on-body RF repeaters. The results of this study can serve as a tool for WBAN designers to aid in the selection of the right RF frequency and technology for their application.
虽然存在多种适用于无线体域网 (WBAN) 的射频 (RF) 技术，但之前它们都是分别进行研究的，目前仍不清楚它们在真实体域网场景中的性能表现如何。在本文中，使用单个参考体域网场景（即沿手臂传播），从路径损耗的角度对六种不同的射频技术（420MHz 至 2.4GHz 之间）进行了实验比较。为了进一步量化体域网中的路径损耗，还提出并实验验证了五种不同体域网场景的测量结果。为了补偿通常较大的路径损耗的影响，引入并实验验证了两种（动态）改善体域网链路的缓解策略：使用相控阵进行波束转向，以及使用体域网 RF 中继器。本研究的结果可以作为 WBAN 设计人员的工具，帮助他们选择适合其应用的正确 RF 频率和技术。
