An experimental investigation of the impact of human shadowing on temporal variation of broadband indoor radio channel characteristics and system performance

This paper reports the results of extensive measurements and analysis of the temporal variations of the indoor radio propagation channel as a result of human traffic. The broadband measurements presented were taken at 5.2 GHz and were carried out in a large laboratory environment. Four antenna configurations were considered: for three sets of measurement the receiver used an omni-directional antenna while at the transmitter omni, 60° and 90° antennas were employed. The fourth arrangement used a pair of 90° antennas at the transmitter and receiver. The measurements also considered the performance of a multi-rate QPSK modem in terms of bit errors measured in the presence of human shadowing. The statistics of the received signal power, RMS delay spread and Rician K-factor are compared for the shadowing and static channel conditions