Performance of receiver spatial diversity in peer to peer radio communications within vegetation media

Forests are typical scenarios for rescue and emergency actions, in which peer-to-peer radio communication systems emerge as good solutions to maintain the crewmembers connected and to coordinate the complete operation. However, the radio links in such complex environment suffers strong fading events. Implementing spatial diversity at reception would improve the connectivity in such situations, as concluded along this contribution supported by measurement results at 2.4, 3.5 and 5.8 GHz. Some spatial diversity experiments improve the performance of previous radio propagation model for peer-topeer communications in vegetation media. The tree canopy shape seems to have more influence than the species or the season. Nevertheless, all tested scenarios provide gain in the radio propagation link, which reinforces the idea presented in this contribution.