Measurement and Simulation Based Study on UWB Channel Characteristics on the Abdomen Area

This paper presents a comprehensive simulation and measurement data based study on the UWB on-body radio channel characteristics on the human abdomen area. The main target is to evaluate channel characteristics with several different antenna location options using a recently published ultra wideband (UWB) antenna designed for inbody communications, e.g. for capsule endoscope localization. For the simulations, we use two voxel models and two layer models. Measurement data consists of channel data for seven volunteers having different body size and body composition. The simulation and measurement data is compared and the reason for the differences is discussed. Furthermore, it is shown that the on-body channel characteristics vary significantly depending on the body size and shape of the volunteer if the antenna separation distance is large. With smaller antenna distances, the difference is minor.