A Measurement-Based Fading Model for Wireless Personal Area Networks

Personal area networks (PANs) are wireless communications systems with high data rates but small coverage area. PAN propagation channels differ from the well-explored propagation channels of wide-area networks due to several reasons: (i) the distances are typically very small, (ii) the antenna arrangements can be quite different, and (iii) the influence from human presence in the environment is different. The current paper presents results of a channel measurement campaign, where measurements are conducted over distances of 1-10 m using several multi-antenna devices, combined to create different PAN scenarios. For each measured Tx-Rx separation, channel realizations are obtained by small spatial movements of the antenna devices, and by rotating the persons holding the devices. From the results, we draw two main conclusions: (i) The small scale amplitude statistics, analyzed as the variations over a small sampling area and frequency subchannels, cannot be described in a satisfactory way using only the Rayleigh or Ricean distribution, rather a mixed distribution, the generalized gamma distribution, is more suitable; (ii) it is advantageous to distinguish between two types of large-scale fading: body shadowing (due to the orientation of the person holding the device) and shadowing due to surrounding objects (lateral movement). We also define and parameterize a complete statistical model for all fading.