EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF DIVERSITY TECHNIQUES FOR ON-BODY COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

In this paper, preliminary results for the analysis of diversity performance for on-body communication systems have been carried out. In these systems both the transmitter and the receiver are placed on the body at a distance depending on the application in use. In particular, a monopole on a square ground plane has been used as a transmitting element and two monopoles on a common ground plane as a two-branch receiver. Measurements have been carried out in an anechoic chamber in order to verify the scattering and fading effects of the body itself on the radio communication channel. The acquired data have been post-processed by resorting to different combination techniques in order to evaluate the diversity performance. Measurement results in terms of diversity gain are shown for a number of configurations. The system performance is discussed as a function of the communication links and body postures.