Wearable ultra-wideband channel sounder for MIMO antenna systems

A novel wearable channel sounder capable of characterising bodyworn ultra-wideband MIMO antenna systems is presented. The new system is based on RF-over-fibre technology and its baseline performance was established through single channel measurements in a range of environments: a reverberation chamber for both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight conditions, and an indoor residential setting. As expected, wideband channel parameters, including mean excess delay and RMS delay spread, were shown to be strongly dependent on the environment. Moreover, the results show that the channel sounder had a maximum operating distance of 11.5 m and 3.3 m for outdoor line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight conditions, respectively. Enhanced multipath contributions led to an increase in range for the indoor environment where the maximum line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight operating distances were 35 m and 3.6 m, respectively.