Investigation of broadband on-body electromagnetic wave propagations

Electromagnetic wave propagations over human body surface are of great interests in recent years due to the emerging medical applications of wireless body area networks (WBANs). Extensive studies have been implemented to reveal on-body wave mechanisms and it was found that: a ground wave is the dominant mechanism for line-of-sight (LOS), near-skin propagation; and a creeping wave contributes most for non-line-of-sight (NLOS), around-torso propagation. The propagation characteristics (i.e., propagation and attenuation constants) of both waves have been extracted and show good agreements with theoretical model predictions.