Experimental characterization of radio wave propagation in hospitals

This paper reports the characterization of radio wave propagation in hospitals. In contrast to other buildings with usual walls, some rooms within hospitals are constructed with special walls that include metallic layers. The structure of the walls depends on the purpose of each hospital room. To consider all the different wall types, measurements were performed in all relevant areas of four hospitals. Rooms, such as operating rooms, X-ray and magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) rooms were taken into account. The measurements were performed at eight discrete frequencies ranging from 42.6 MHz up to 5.2 GHz. In order to investigate accurately the wave propagation properties, several antennas and measurement systems were used. Results show that radio wave propagation characteristics vary from room-to-room. It turned out that it is important to consider the room as a whole when determining the attenuation between adjacent rooms, because a small part of the wall is not enough. In addition to usual wave propagation phenomena such as reflection and transmission, slots and openings give rise to coupling effects through walls containing metallic layers in their structure. The measurement data is useful for hospital designers and hospital engineers.