Estimating Diversity for Body-Worn Antennas

Abstract:
In this paper, we present a modified diversity evaluation method for body-worn antenna systems. The novelty introduced in this method amounts to considering only the human body interactions and indirectly assessing the environment effects. Thus, this formulation can be adapted easily to any environment. The environment is modelled through the polarization and incident angle of the incoming and outgoing waves. Thus, only changes in the post-processing are involved in order to account for different environments minimizing the computation time. The body interactions are either included via measurements or simulations. The simulations, specifically, include three human postures (standing, kneeling, and prone) to increase generality and the effectiveness of the antenna configurations. Initially, a variety of single body-worn antenna configurations are investigated to study the body effects on the antenna performance and determine the optimum antenna mounting position. From this study, the optimum configurations based on communication data throughput and cost are identified. The operation frequency is 500 MHz – 600 MHz and the environment setup includes upper hemisphere incoming directions and random polarization.