A study on the development of a fading emulator for BAN antenna assessment

To evaluate the antenna performance used in wireless device in human vicinity, we developed an Over-The-Air apparatus, where the effects caused by the human dynamic characteristics and multipath propagation environment can be realized simultaneously. Moreover, based on different on-body antenna locations, such as waist, head, wrist and ankle, we clarified the antenna characteristics of the polarization behavior and the path loss, which are varied with regard to the combined shadowing and fading effects caused by human walking motion and multipath propagation environment. Furthermore, we proposed a weighted-polarization antenna applied to BAN on-body communication systems to achieve the radio link enhancement. The proposed antenna is confirmed that can obtain a high and stable received signal power regardless of the arm-swing motion and antenna placement. The results of this research have been published in journal papers and international conferences.