5744 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO.
11, NOVEMBER 2013
Statistical Path-Loss Model for On-Body
Communications at 94 GHz
Alessio Brizzi, Student Member, IEEE, Alice Pellegrini, Lianhong Zhang, Member, IEEE, and
Yang Hao, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—A great amount of work on antennas and propagation
for body-centric wireless communication has been studied at fre-
quencies up to X band; however, on-body radio propagation at mil-
limeter/sub-millimeter wave frequencies still remains largely unex-
plored. This paper presents a study of on-body radio propagation
at 94 GHz, particularly focusing on the analysis of specific chan-
nels such as waist-to-torso and head-to-shoulder links. Measured
data are compared with results obtained with numerical simula-
tions emphasizing the sensitivity of the simulated path loss to the
positioning of the receivers with respect to the human body.
Index Terms—Millimeter/sub-millimeter waves, on-body propa-
gation, path loss, ray tracing.
I. INTRODUCTION
B ODY-CENTRIC wireless communications are now re-
garded as a well-established subject area, with many pub-
lished papers addressing different aspects related to antennas
and propagation [1]–[3]. In particular, on-body radio propaga-
tion is related to the Body Area Networks (BANs), in which
human subjects are considered as a communication medium,
in contrast with conventional indoor/outdoor communications,
where they are just considered as electromagnetic scatterers and
sources of fading [4]–[6]. BANs are relevant to a wide range of
applications, of both military and civil relevance, including aug-
mented reality, vital signs monitoring and interactive entertain-
ment [7], [8]. One of these is the development of advanced dis-
mounted infantry, which includes various wireless devices inte-
grated in the soldier’s gear (clothes, weapons, armor) [9], [10],
aimed at increasing its performance and effectiveness. Many
BAN antennas and on-body propagation studies have been fo-
cused on 2.4 GHz, 5.8 GHz and UWB bands [1], [11]–[13],
while various groups have devoted themselves to the study of
network topology and transmission protocols [14]–[16].
Although antennas and radio propagation for on-body com-
munications at frequencies up to X band have been studied
extensively, research interests in higher frequency bands are
still growing, particularly at mm-wave/sub-mm-wave frequen-
cies. Indeed, on-body propagation at 60 GHz has been recently
Manuscript received June 18, 2012; revised June 11, 2013; accepted July 30,
2013. Date of publication August 07, 2013; date of current version October 28,
2013. This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC), under Grant EP/I009019/1.
The authors are with the Antennas and Electromagnetics Group, School of
Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of
London, London E1 4NS, U.K. (e-mail: yang.hao@eecs.qmul.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2277718
0018-926X © 2013 IEEE
studied [17]–[19]. This interest is justified by the following
reasons. First of all, the use of higher frequencies would enable
broadband mobile communications with an extremely high
data rate, required, for instance, in case of real-time audio and
video streaming. Moreover, a shorter wavelength allows the
realization of more compact devices, which is of paramount
importance in the design of wearable devices. MM/sub-mm
waves also demonstrate higher free-space attenuation with
respect to microwaves: from the point of view of the security,
this is an important feature, which allows to confine the wave
propagation in the proximity of the human body, thus limiting
the possibility of interference with other systems and, in mil-
itary and defense, reducing the probability of interception by
hostile forces [20].
A further advantage of mm-waves is the limited interaction
with biological tissues, reducing possible concerns relevant to
electromagnetic exposure of the human body [21]. This is par-
ticularly due to the fact that, at these frequencies, the penetration
depth into the human tissues gets smaller and, thus, it minimizes
the absorption of waves generated by on-body devices. How-
ever, this is an area subject to further studies and it is out of the
scope of this work.
Finally, the possibility of avoiding requesting licenses is
likely to be a strong incentive to the widespread implementa-
tion of mm-wave BAN systems: for this reason, the frequencies
around 60 GHz and 94 GHz raise particular interest. In fact,
many countries allow the unlicensed use of a portion of the
spectrum of up to 7 GHz around 60 GHz [22], which allows
data rates greater than 2 Gbit/s. Moreover, in the USA the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allows the use of
the frequencies between 92 and 95 GHz for unlicensed indoor
applications [23], [24] and the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) was invited to follow this indication.
An additional advantage of these two bands is that they do not
seem to be good candidates for point-to-point long range multi-
Gbit/s links [25], [26]: this reduces the risk that such frequency
bands get overcrowded by an excessive amount of applications.
In addition, the high free space loss also contributes to the
reduction of the BAN-to-BAN interference. Table I reports the
calculation of path losses in free space for various distances rel-
evant to body-centric systems at 94 GHz. On the other hand, al-
though the atmospheric absorption increases with the frequency
[27], its contribution to the on-body link is still negligible at the
considered distances.
However, the use of mm-waves for on-body applications
presents significant challenges. If the high free space attenu-
ation helps in confining the energy around the human body
and mitigates the risk of interference, it also results in high
BRIZZI et al.: STATISTICAL PATH-LOSS MODEL FOR ON-BODY COMMUNICATIONS AT 94 GHz
TABLE I
ATMOSPHERIC ABSORPTION AND FREE SPACE PATH
LOSS AT 94 GHZ FOR BODY CENTRIC COMMUNICATION LINKS
attenuation on the transmitter-receiver link. The free space
attenuation over a 50 cm link increases from 34 dB at 2.45 GHz
to 62 dB and 66 dB at 60 GHz and 94 GHz respectively. The
wavelength, which is equal to 5 mm at 60 GHz and 3.2 mm at
94 GHz, also makes the human body a scatterer with extremely
large electrical dimensions: this may introduce heavy fades
due to shadowing effects, as the loss of the line-of-sight (LOS)
link is highly possible in relation to movements of human body
parts.
A further point that differentiates BANs at mm-waves from
those at lower frequencies is that the presence of clothing cannot
be considered negligible, as the majority of investigations at
lower frequencies have implicitly or explicitly implied [1], [28],
[29]. The typical thickness of clothes, ranging from tenths of
millimeter up to a few millimeters, is comparable to the wave-
length at V and W bands, and it has been demonstrated how their
presence can affect the power transmission coefficient between
air and skin at 60 GHz [21].
For the above mentioned reasons, the on-body environment
is potentially hostile to the propagation of millimeter waves.
Therefore, the characterization of the propagation channel is ur-
gently needed for the development of reliable mm-wave BANs.
So far, modeling of the propagation channel up to frequencies
at the X band has been relying mainly on measurement cam-
paigns and full-wave simulations based on the finite-difference
time-domain (FDTD) method [28], [30]–[34]. If at these fre-
quencies the FDTD has the advantage of being able to take into
account both in-body and off-body propagation, at mm-wave
frequencies such an approach does not seem to be feasible: the
electrical dimensions of the human body (in the order of hun-
dreds of wavelengths) make the computational burden of an
FDTD simulation extremely high. In addition, the penetration
depth is small [35], [36], resulting in a remarkable fraction of
the computational time being spent to calculate the negligible
field inside the human body. Therefore, the use of ray-based
methods has been considered [17], [18].
The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary path loss
characterization for on-body communication at 94 GHz and to
evaluate the tradeoff between experimental investigation and
numerical prediction. This is achieved through the investigation
of the on-body propagation channel over the head-shoulder and
waist-torso links at 94 GHz. A measurement campaign has been
carried out, considering various positions of the receiver on the
shoulder and the chest area and the collected data have been
compared with the ones obtained by using ray-based methods
applied to a similar body centric scenario. In addition, measured
data have been compared with similar results obtained at lower
frequencies [37].
5745
Fig. 1. Position of transmitter and receiver: (a) head-shoulder link and (b)
waist-torso link.
Finally, in order to evaluate the sensitivity of the methodology
to the position of the receivers, two different grids of receivers
were considered for the waist-to-chest link: a planar and a con-
formal one. The commercial software Remcom XGTD [38],
which implements a combination of Geometrical Optics (GO)
and Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD), has been used to an-
alyze the aforementioned links.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II de-
scribes the measurement campaign carried out on the investi-
gated channels. In Section III the numerical simulation has been
described and in Section IV a comparison between the simulated
data and the measured ones has been shown. The conclusions
are drawn in Section V.
II. EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION
Two standard flanged rectangular waveguides (WR-10) at 94
GHz have been used as transmitter and receiver by placing them
in proximity of a human subject in different reciprocal positions.
These antennas present a less directive pattern compared to the
commercially available W-band horn antennas and, therefore,
they appear to be less sensitive to the misalignment between the
transmitter and the receiver.
The path loss relative to two different links has been mea-
sured: the head-shoulder link and the waist-torso link. In the
former case, the transmitter antenna has been fixed on the head
of the subject, above the ear; the receiver has been placed near
the shoulder, on the same side of the head, in correspondence
of several distances from the transmitter (Fig. 1(a)). In the latter
case, the transmitter has been placed on the left side of the belt
and the receiver has been moved in order to scan a grid of dif-
ferent positions placed parallel to the body in the chest area
(Fig. 1(b)). The dimensions of the grid have been chosen in
order to cover the torso area; in particular, the grid is set to be
30 cm by 36 cm. The spacing (equal to 3 cm) has been fixed
in order to obtain a good trade-off between having a sufficient
amount of data and limiting the measurement time. The distance
between the center of the waveguide and the body surface is 1
cm, resulting from the flange of the waveguide plus a thin spacer
to avoid direct contact between the waveguide and the human
subject. The measured data were collected on a conformal grid
due to the body curvature. Both the transmitter and the receiver
have been placed on top of the cloths. Fig. 2 shows the measure-
ment setup without the presence of the human subject (a), and
5746
Fig. 2. Measurement setup: (a) no human subject, (b–c) waist-to-torso link and
(d) head-to-shoulder link.
Fig. 3. Measurement system for evaluation of path loss over the waist-torso
and head-shoulder links.
with the human subject for the waist-to-torso link (b–c) and for
the head-to-shoulder link (d). The absorbers used to minimize
scattering from the measurement system were removed in (d)
for a clearer visualization of the set-up.
The waist-torso link has been investigated considering the
human subject wearing two different types of clothes: a thin
cotton T-shirt and a thick wool sweater.
The measurements of the path loss for the described links
have been carried out by using the system setup depicted in
Fig. 3. A continuous wave (CW) generator has been used to
generate a signal at 10.4 GHz, which represents the input for
the frequency multiplier.
The signal at 94 GHz, output of the multiplier, is decoupled
by the 20-dB directional coupler. This module provides both the
feeding for the open-end rectangular waveguide WR-10 and the
input signal for the mixer.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013
TABLE II
HEAD-SHOULDER MEASURED PATH LOSS FOR DIFFERENT DISTANCES
This module extracts the 9th harmonic of the 94-GHz signal
and combines it with the one generated by the Local Oscillator
(LO) in order to obtain a reference signal at a frequency of 20
MHz, which represents the input for the vector network analyzer
(VNA). On the receiving path, the second waveguide (WR-10)
is remotely controlled by a mechanical scan with a precision of
0.1 mm. The 9th harmonic of the received signal is combined
with the one generated by the LO in order to obtain a test signal
again at 20 MHz. Finally, the VNA allows comparing the re-
ceived signal with the reference one, both at 20 MHz, in order
to obtain the path loss in terms of parameter.
Firstly, the head-shoulder link has been considered; in order
to scan the shoulder area, the receiving antenna has been moved
covering four different distances from the head. The measured
path loss has been reported in Table II.
For what concerns the waist-torso link, the propagation
channel has been investigated in terms of path loss exponent
and shadowing factor according to the following model [39],
[40]:
(1)
where is the estimated path loss at the reference dis-
tance between transmitter and receiver, is the path loss ex-
ponent and is a normal distribution which has zero ex-
pectation and standard deviation , representing the shadowing
factor. Actually, several statistical models have been considered
for the latter, and the t-location scale distribution reveals to be
the best fit according to the Log-likelihood criterion. However,
the discrepancy between this distribution and the normal one is
less than 5%. Therefore, a normal distribution of the shadowing
factor has been here considered to avoid increasing the com-
plexity of the model.
By observing the previous formula, it can be noticed that the
path loss is assumed to be dependent on the logarithm of the
distance between the transmitter and the receiver, normal-
ized to the minimum distance between the two antennas.
According to the linear model expressed in (1), the path loss
exponent , which allows taking into account the propagation
in a complex environment, is equal to 2 for propagation in free
space and is expected to be higher for propagation in presence of
scatterers and obstacles. Two sets of measured data have been
obtained considering the human subject wearing firstly a thin
cotton T-shirt and then a wool sweater. The measurements have
been carried out considering a minimum distance of 10 cm.
The two sets of measured data have been plotted in Fig. 4. Ac-
cording to the sensitivity of the instruments, path loss contribu-
tions higher than 80 dB have been neglected.
BRIZZI et al.: STATISTICAL PATH-LOSS MODEL FOR ON-BODY COMMUNICATIONS AT 94 GHz
Fig. 4. Measured path loss for the waist-torso link: (blue) human subject
wearing a cotton T-shirt and (red) human subject wearing wool sweater.
Fig. 5. Cumulative distribution function of the shadowing factor for measured
data.
By considering the above mentioned figure, in order to obtain
the path loss exponent of the measured data, the linear regres-
sion has been calculated.
In particular, in the case of the data shown in Fig. 4, relative
to the measurements performed on a human subject wearing a
thin cotton T-shirt, the path loss exponent is 4.4; in the case of
the human subject wearing a thicker wool sweater (Fig. 4), the
coefficient in (1) is equal to 4.5. The higher value in the case
of a wool sweater is probably due to the combination of dif-
ferent dielectric and geometrical properties with respect to the
previous scenario. The higher electrical conductivity of wool
with respect to cotton, and the larger thickness of the sweater in
comparison with the T-shirt make the space close to the human
trunk more adverse to propagation. The cumulative distribution
function (CDF) of the shadowing factor , obtained ac-
cording to (1), is shown in Fig. 5 for the two measured sets of
data.
In the case of the measurements performed on the human
subject wearing a cotton T-shirt, the standard deviation of the
curve which fits the data is equal to 6.4, while in the case of the
5747
TABLE III
COMPARISON OF PATH LOSS EXPONENT AND SHADOWING
FACTOR AT 2.4 GHZ AND 94 GHZ
TABLE IV
ELECTROMAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF DRY SKIN
AND MUSCLE AT 2.4 GHZ AND 94 GHZ [36]
wool sweater the same parameter is equal to 8.7. The increase
in the shadowing factor confirms that the propagation channel
is significantly affected by the presence of clothes. A compar-
ison with the results obtained by Sani et al. [37], [43] at 2.4 GHz
in a similar scenario is shown Table III. Due to the dependence
of the electromagnetic properties of the human tissues on the
frequency, in the two referred cases, the dielectric permittivity
and the electrical conductivity are respectively higher and lower
than the correspondent ones at 94 GHz (Table IV) [36].
Paper [37] analyses four different antennas (microstrip
rectangular patch, planar monopole, point source and inverted
L), and the mean values of and have been reported in the
Table III. In [43] various subjects are considered: out of them,
Male 02 is very similar to the subject of the measurements of
the present investigation (1.78 m height per 74 Kg weight),
and the relevant values are reported in the same table. It can
be noticed how both the path loss exponent and the shadowing
factor are higher in the 94-GHz scenario, even if the antenna
considered in this work presents a greater gain and a good om-
nidirectionality over the area of interest. This can be ascribed to
the bigger electrical dimensions of the obstacles over the body
surface (curvature of waist, stomach and chest), which increase
the scattering and obstruct the propagation.
III. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
The numerical analysis has been performed by using the soft-
ware RemCom which implements a combination
of geometrical optics and uniform theory of diffraction (GO-
UTD).
The modifications of the radiation patterns of the antennas
due to the proximity of the human body have been taken into
account.
A. Numerical Model
The investigated numerical model, shown in Fig. 6, is shaped
to have dimensions similar to the subject of the measurement
campaign, and consists of a 3-dimensional surface composed
by triangular facets. This model has been obtained by means
of the statistical analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
5748
Fig. 6. Digital phantom of a male human body.
Fig. 7. Layered model: according to the position of the clothes, three different
areas of coverage can be distinguished.
scans of a population of several human subjects which present
different ranges of shape [41].
In order to take into account the electromagnetic properties
of the tissues and the fabrics, the model has been considered
as a stratified structure. In particular, three different areas can
be distinguished according to the clothes worn by the human
subject used for the measurements. Considering the small pen-
etration depth at the investigated frequency of 94 GHz [30], the
body has been assumed as having the dielectric characteristics
of dry skin: hence the fictitious thickness of 30 mm assigned to
the skin layer. Following this assumption, the parts uncovered
by the clothes, such as the head, are associated to a single layer
of skin.
In order to have as much similarity as possible between the
simulated scenario and the measured one, two models wearing
thin cotton T-shirt and a wool sweater have been considered. As
indicated in Fig. 7, the former is represented by a layer of dry
skin, a layer of air (1 mm of thickness) and a layer of cotton
(1 mm of thickness). In the latter model a layer which has the
electromagnetic properties of the wool replaces the one which
represents the cotton fabric. In addition, a model entirely made
of dry skin has been considered for a comparison.
In Table V the electromagnetic properties and the thicknesses
of each material have been considered [36], [42].
As described in the previous section, the path loss of two
different sets of reciprocal positions of the transmitter and the
receivers has been evaluated.
In order to simulate a scenario as similar as possible to the
measurement setup, the transmitter and receiver positioning
described in Section II (Fig. 1) has been replicated. For the
waist-to-torso link, both a flat and a conformal grid of receivers
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013
TABLE V
ELECTROMAGNETIC PROPERTIES AND THICKNESS
OF THE LAYERED STRUCTURE
have been taken into account. It is worth mentioning that in the
case of the flat grid, the transmitter does not lay on the plane
defined by the receivers; therefore the LOS condition is not
guaranteed for all the receivers. The two grids were considered
in order to evaluate how the agreement between simulated
and measured results changes according to the accuracy of
the simulated scenario. Setting a conformal grid is, in fact, a
very time-consuming process, and it has to be repeated every
time when a different numerical phantom is considered. If it
is accurate enough, the use of a flat grid would otherwise be
useful to speed up the analysis process.
B. Pattern Evaluation in Proximity of the Human Body
In a typical body-centric scenario, the antennas are required to
operate in proximity of the human body. Therefore, depending
on both the shape and the electromagnetic properties of the
human body at the investigated frequencies, the performance
of the antennas, in terms of radiation pattern, can be affected. In
order to take into account this effect, a simulation of the flanged
rectangular waveguide, used in the measurement setup, oper-
ating in proximity of a slice of skin, has been performed in CST
Microwave Studio.
As described in Section II, for both the investigated links,
the antenna can assume two different positions with respect to
the human body. In particular, the E plane of the rectangular
waveguide is orthogonal to the body when the transmitter is
placed on the head. Transmitters and receivers placed in the area
of the shoulder, of the chest and of the belt, exhibit the E plane
parallel to the body. In order to address this issue, the flanged
rectangular waveguide has been simulated in proximity of the
human body according to the two above described reciprocal
positions. Therefore, a flat digital phantom which presents the
properties of the dry skin (Table V) has been placed parallel
and orthogonal to the E plane of the waveguide, as indicated in
Fig. 8(a) and (b), respectively.
In order to evaluate whether additional losses related to the
impedance mismatch due to the proximity of the human body
should be considered, the distance between the antenna and the
body has been set to different values. An lower than 10
dB has been observed in every case; therefore the impedance
mismatch of the flanged waveguide used in this study does not
affect the path loss evaluation.
The radiation patterns, evaluated on the E and H plane, of
the flanged waveguide operating near a vertical and a horizontal
digital phantom are shown in Figs. 9 and 10 respectively. By re-
ferring to the these figures, it is important to note that the sym-
metry of the radiation pattern is not preserved on the E or on the
BRIZZI et al.: STATISTICAL PATH-LOSS MODEL FOR ON-BODY COMMUNICATIONS AT 94 GHz
Fig. 8. Flanged rectangular waveguide operating in proximity of a slice of
human body: (a) E plane parallel to the skin and (b) E plane orthogonal to the
skin.
Fig. 9. Gain of the flanged rectangular waveguide operating in proximity of a
vertical slice of dry skin: (a) E plane and (b) H plane.
Fig. 10. Gain of the flanged rectangular waveguide operating in proximity of
an horizontal slice of dry skin: (a) E plane and (b) H plane.
H plane, according to the operative conditions of the antenna in
proximity of the human body.
The evaluated radiation patterns have been imported in
Remcom XGTD and then assigned to both the transmitter
and the receiver. The transmitting and receiving antenna have
been aligned according to the polarization of the electric field,
as indicated in Fig. 11(a)–(b) for both head-shoulder and
waist-torso link. In order to achieve a good trade-off between
numerical accuracy and computational burden, in addition to
the direct ray, 4th order contributions for reflected rays and 1st
order contribution for the transmitted ray have been taken into
account. Moreover, contributions due to wedge and surface
diffraction have also been considered.
5749
Fig. 11. Antenna position (a) for head-shoulder link and (b) for waist-torso
link. (c) Head of digital phantom with ear.
TABLE VI
COMPARISON BETWEEN SIMULATED AND MEASURED PATH LOSS FOR THE
HEAD-SHOULDER LINK AT DIFFERENT DISTANCES FOR DIFFERENT CLOTHES
WITH AND WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF THE EAR
IV. COMPARISON OF RESULTS
To evaluate the reliability of the ray-tracing technique for pre-
dicting on-body radio propagation, a comparison between the
measured and simulated data has been carried out.
Firstly, the head-shoulder link has been examined. The
simulated path loss has been compared with the measured one
(Table II) for four different transmitter-receiver distances; the
results are shown in Table VI. Both the cases with and without
the presence of the ear (Fig. 11(c)) have been considered.
Moreover, a comparison between the data obtained by con-
sidering a model entirely made of dry skin and a model wearing
woolen fabrics, described in Section III-A, has been shown in
Table VI, as well.
By referring to Table VI, it can be noticed that, for the con-
sidered link there are no significant differences between the path
loss values obtained by considering human body models made
of different materials.
5750
Fig. 12. Simulated path loss for the waist-torso link by using both a conformal
and a flat grid: (a) human subject made of dry skin, (b) human subject wearing
a cotton T-shirt and (c) human subject wearing wool sweater.
For what concerns the comparison with the measured data,
it is important to note that for the head-shoulder link, the trans-
mitter and the receiver are in line of sight (LoS) for each investi-
gated reciprocal position, therefore the direct ray represents the
main contribution to the path loss calculation.
The presence of the ear makes the model more realistic, in-
deed diffraction from the ear affects the path loss evaluated at
each receiver providing very accurate results compared with the
measured ones. On the other hand, this analysis confirms that
the 24 cm link is more critical than the others. The disagree-
ment in the data could be due to mis-shaped antenna radiation
pattern associated with the transmitter and the receiver. In the
specific case of the minimum distance here considered (24 cm),
the difference in the measured and simulated path loss is mainly
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013
Fig. 13. Cumulative distribution function of the shadowing factor for simulated
data.
due to the proximity of the head. Indeed the local orientation
of the facets can strongly affect the propagation direction of the
rays. In this latter case, the contribution due to multiple bounces
or diffracted rays become more significant, and a small differ-
ence between the real and simulated scenario can bring to a re-
markable punctual discrepancy between the two. However it is
worth mentioning that the head-to-shoulder link has validity in
the light of a preliminary point-to-point analysis. In fact, this
link is strongly affected by the movements of the head: there-
fore it requires a detailed statistical analysis, which is out of the
scope of the present paper and will be the subject of future in-
vestigations.
Subsequently, results for the waist-torso link have been com-
pared with the measured ones in terms of path loss exponent
as described in Section II. Fig. 12 shows path loss values, ob-
tained as a function of the logarithm of the normalized distance
between the transmitter and the receiver, for both a conformal
and flat grid, relative to three different cases: the model has the
properties of dry skin, cotton T-shirt and woolen sweater.
In Fig. 13 the CDF of the shadowing factor, expressed in (1),
evaluated in three simulated cases, is shown.
The comparison between simulated and measured data is
summarized in Tables VII and VIII in terms of path loss ex-
ponent and shadowing factor of data. The simulated data have
been obtained considering both a flat and a conformal grid of
receivers.
By observing the data shown in Tables VII and VIII, it can
be noticed that the presence of thin cotton T-shirt does not sig-
nificantly affect the estimation of the path loss exponent with
respect to the case of the model characterized only by dry skin.
In addition, by comparing the simulation results, obtained
with a flat and a conformal grid, higher values of the path loss
exponent can be noticed in the latter case. This phenomenon is,
as expected, mainly due to the higher number of shadowed re-
ceivers.
In the case of a flat grid, the discrepancy between simulated
and measured path loss exponent is 16% and 7% for the T-shirt
BRIZZI et al.: STATISTICAL PATH-LOSS MODEL FOR ON-BODY COMMUNICATIONS AT 94 GHz
TABLE VII
PATH LOSS CALCULATION FOR MEASURED AND SIMULATED DATA
TABLE VIII
SHADOWING FACTOR CALCULATION FOR MEASURED AND SIMULATED DATA
and wool case, respectively. In the case of a conformal grid, the
percentage of discrepancy is now reduced to about 7% for both
fabrics.
Furthermore, in both measurement and simulation with the
conformal grid there is only a 2% increase in when changing
from cotton T-shirt to wool sweater, while in the case of a flat
grid the increase is 13.5%.
On the other hand, it can be noticed how, in the simulations,
the decreases when the human subject clothing changes from
the T-shirt to the wool sweater, while it demonstrates an op-
posite trend from the measurements, therefore highlighting the
limitation in the accuracy of the ray-tracing methods in the in-
vestigated scenarios.
A further limitation in the use of the ray-tracing method is
the discrepancy in the values of : although the punctual
values at the reference distance agree with the measured ones,
the linear regression yields a lower value.
V. CONCLUSION
An investigation of a body-centric scenario performed at 94
GHz has been shown in this paper. To this aim, a campaign
of measurements has been performed in presence of a human
subject. In addition, in order to investigate the reliability of
ray-based techniques applied to the study of BANs, simulations
have been carried out by using Remcom . The path
loss obtained by the simulation has been compared with the
measured one. For what concerns the head-shoulder link, the
discrepancy between measured and simulated data is mainly due
to the difference in reproducing the human subject head.
In fact, as demonstrated in the case where the ear is mod-
eled, a better agreement between measurements and simulations
is achieved. Additionally, the analysis points out that the prox-
imity of the transmitter with respect to the head plays a key role
in the accuracy of the results.
The local orientation of the facets in the model can strongly
affect the path of the rays from the transmitter and the receiver.
5751
This effect is more visible when the collected data are not
enough to trace a statistical analysis while a value-to-value com-
parison is required. In addition, the simulations have demon-
strated that the presence of clothes in the numerical model, such
as the wool sweater, does not significantly affect the path loss.
For what concerns the waist-torso link, the comparison of the
path loss exponent model obtained both for the simulated data
(in the case of a flat and a conformal grid of receivers) and mea-
sured ones has been discussed. A linear regression of the data
has been evaluated in terms of path loss exponent and shad-
owing factor and a normal distribution has been considered to
model the latter. A discrepancy of the path loss exponent be-
tween 16% and 7% is obtained for the T-shirt and wool case
respectively for a flat grid of receivers. This discrepancy is dra-
matically reduced to 7% for both fabrics in the case of a con-
formal grid of receivers.
However, discrepancies in other statistics were observed,
such as and shadowing factor. In general, although
the numerical model has shape and dimensions similar to the
human subject used for the measurements, the exact geometry
of the curvatures of the body and the details of the clothes were
not exactly reproduced. These differences between the mea-
sured and simulated scenarios, at the investigated frequencies,
contribute to perturb the propagation from the transmitter to the
receiver. In addition, another uncertainty in on-body measure-
ments can result from the modification of the radiation pattern
of both transmitting and receiving antennas in proximity of the
human body. This effect can be accounted in the simulation by
incorporating a more realistic radiation pattern, however small
changes depending on the particular positions are difficult to
replicate.
In the light of these considerations, the statistical analysis pre-
sented here demonstrates that a ray tracing technique is suitable
for a macroscopic description of a body centric scenario, such
as the path loss exponent calculation over the trunk area. On
the other hand, the agreement between measured and simulated
data has an extremely strong dependency on the accuracy of the
simulated scenario, in terms of body shape and positioning of
the antennas.
Besides, the analysis presented in this paper shows that, in
order to possibly obtain a generalized path loss model that can
provide accurate link budget evaluation for different subjects, a
complete and thorough investigation of the path loss variation
with body shape and garments would be required.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Dr. S.-L. Lee and Prof.
G.-Z. Yang at the Department of Computing, Imperial College
London, for providing the digital phantom. The authors also
would like to thank Dr. A. Katsounaros and Mr. M. Munoz,
both with the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer
Science at Queen Mary University of London, for their precious
support in this work. Finally, the authors would like to thank
Prof. P. Hall for the fruitful discussions.
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Alessio Brizzi (S’13) received the degree in telecom-
munication engineering from the University of Pisa,
Italy, in 2003. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. de-
gree in electronic engineering at Queen Mary, Uni-
versity of London, U.K.
He worked for three years as a contractor for
the Microwave and Radiation Laboratory at the
University of Pisa, subsequently moving to a
consulting company as technical consultant. His re-
search focuses on millimeter waves for body-centric
communications, specifically on the characterization
and modeling of the propagation channel, and on the design of antennas for
on-body systems. His research topics also include numerical modeling and
nanocommunications.
BRIZZI et al.: STATISTICAL PATH-LOSS MODEL FOR ON-BODY COMMUNICATIONS AT 94 GHz
Alice Pellegrini received the Laurea degree (cum
laude) in telecommunication engineering in applied
electromagnetics from the University of Pisa, Italy,
in October 2005 and the Ph.D. degree in informa-
tion engineering at the Microwave and Radiation
Laboratory, within the Information Engineering
Department of the University of Pisa, in May 2009.
Her main research activity concerned the study
of innovative numerical methods and hybrid tech-
niques, based on mode matching, finite element
method combined with the spectral decomposition
approach, for analyzing frequency selective surfaces and finite large phased
arrays of radiating apertures. Currently, she is enrolled as Post Doctoral
Research Assistant at Queen Mary University of London, U.K., with the
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Her main activities
are relevant to analysis, simulation and measurements in the field of body area
network (BAN) applications at millimeter waves with particular interest in the
application of high frequency ray-based techniques. She has been co-organizer
of the Special Session on Body-Centric Wireless Communications at PIERS
2013 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Lianhong Zhang (M’12) received the B.Sc. and
M.Sc. degrees in radio physics, Electronic Science
and Engineering Department, Nanjing University,
China, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in elec-
tronic engineering from the School of Electronic
Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary,
University of London, U.K.
From 1995 to 1997, he was an antenna engi-
neer with Aerospace & Aeronautical Corporation,
Shanghai, China. From 1997 to 2005, he was a
satellite communication engineer with ST Teleport,
Singapore. He has been working as a postdoctoral research assistant in the
Antenna and Electromagnetics Lab, school of Electronic Engineering and
Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London since July 2010. His
research is in the areas of millimeter wave imaging for concealed target
detection, body-centric wireless communications at millimeter band, indoor
radio propagation channel characterization, building material characterization,
and nanoantenna for ultrafast coherent control of optical fields.
5753
Yang Hao (F’13) received the Ph.D. degree from the
Centre for Communications Research (CCR) at the
University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K., in 1998.
He is currently a Professor of antennas and
electromagnetics in the Antenna Engineering Group,
Queen Mary College, University of London. He
is active in a number of areas, including computa-
tional electromagnetics, electromagnetic band-gap
structures and microwave metamaterials, antennas
and radio propagation for body centric wireless
networks, active antennas for millimeter/sub-mil-
limeter applications and photonic integrated antennas. He is a co-editor and
co-author of the books Antennas and Radio Propagation for Body-Centric
Wireless Communications (Boston, MA, USA: Artech House, 2006), and
FDTD Modelling of Metamaterials: Theory and Applications (Boston, MA,
USA: Artech House, 2008), respectively.
Prof. Hao is an Associate Editor for the IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS
PROPAGATION LETTERS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION, International Journal of Antennas and Propagation and
an honorary editor for the Chinese Journal of Radio Science. He was
also a Co-Guest Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION. He is a Vice Chairman of the Executive Team of IET Antennas
and Propagation Professional Network. He is also a member of Board of the
European School of Antenna Excellence, a member of EU VISTA Cost Action
and the Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and Meta-
materials, Metamorphose VI AISBL. He has served as an invited (ISAP07,
LAPC07, IWAT08) and keynote speaker (ANTEM05, IWAT’10), a conference
General Chair (LAPC08, Metamaterials09), a Session Chair and short course
organizer at many international conferences. He is a holder of the Royal Society
Wolfson Research Merit Award between 2013 and 2018. He was elected as a
Fellow of the ERA Foundation in 2007 and a Fellow of the IET in 2010.