On-body characterisation of a compact planar UWB antenna

This paper presents the on-body characterisation of a compact planar UWB antenna for wireless body area network applications. The performance of a compact UWB antenna is analysed in comparison to a coplanar waveguide-fed UWB inverted cone antenna when they are placed on the human body. The frequency domain measurement of the on-body UWB channel is performed with the receiver placed at various positions on the body in order to effectively characterise the on-body channels. The main channel parameters including the mean delay and root mean square delay spread are derived from measurement data and analysed statistically and empirically to evaluate the effect of the antenna on the radio channel and subsequently on the wireless body area network performance. The results have shown that the compact antenna is suitable for use in body area network applications.