Performance evaluation of wearable wireless body area networks during walking motions in 444.5 MHz and 2450 MHz

This paper gives performance evaluation of wearable wireless body area networks (WBANs) during walking motion. In order to evaluate the performance, received signal strength (RSS), packet error rate (PER), and bit error rate (BER) are measured in an anechoic chamber and an office room. This measurement is conducted in the frequency band of 444.5 and 2450 MHz by using GFSK signal with symbol rate of 1 MHz. The results show that in the anechoic chamber the WBAN using the 444.5 MHz enables to provide error-free communication, on the other hand, the WBAN operated in the 2450 MHz faces packet errors. Measurement results in the office room give comparable performance between these frequencies. From these observations, the use of 2450 MHz for wearable WBANs needs reflection waves in order to compensate a shadowing effect caused by the human body using the WBAN.