Patrick Van Torre

Characterization of Measured Indoor Off-Body MIMO Channels with Correlated Fading, Correlated Shadowing and Constant Path Loss

Indoor off-body wireless MIMO links between a mobile user equipped with wearable textile patch antennas and a fixed base station exhibit specific channel behavior due to the near presence and movements of the human body. Therefore, they require a dedicated channel model that captures the effects of correlated small-scale Rayleigh fading and correlated lognormal shadowing. A methodology is presented to construct such a model, allowing to predict the bit error characteristics and channel capacity curves based on the shadowing and fading correlation matrices that are extracted from channel measurements. It is shown that by separating shadowing, including effects caused by movement and reorientation of the human body, from small-scale fading, the main mechanisms of the off-body communication link are accurately captured by the model. A clear dependence of the shadowing correlation values on the physical layout of the antenna system is found. In our measurements, shadowing is not significantly decorrelated by polarization diversity or front-to-back diversity whereas the small-scale fading is clearly decorrelated. From the model, MIMO channel realizations with identical bit error rate and channel capacity characteristics as the measured channel can be quickly generated for link emulation purposes.

Compact Personal Distributed Wearable Exposimeter

A compact wearable personal distributed exposimeter (PDE) is proposed, sensing the power density of incident radio frequency (RF) fields on the body of a human. In contrast to current commercial exposimeters, our PDE, being composed of multiple compact personal wearable RF exposimeter sensor modules, minimizes uncertainties caused by the proximity of the body, the specific antenna used, and the exact position of the exposimeter. For unobtrusive deployment inside a jacket, each individual exposimeter sensor module is specifically implemented on the feedplane of a textile patch antenna. The new wearable sensor modules high-resolution logarithmic detector logs RF signal levels. Next, on-board flash memory records minimum, maximum, and average exposure data over a time span of more than two weeks, at a one-second sample period. Sample-level synchronization of each individual exposimeter sensor module enables combining of measurements collected by different nodes. The system is first calibrated in an anechoic chamber, and then compared with a commercially available single-unit exposimeter. Next, the PDE is validated in realistic conditions, by measuring the average RF power density on a human during a walk in an urban environment and comparing the results to spectrum analyzer measurements with a calibrated antenna.

Synchronous Wearable Wireless Body Sensor Network Composed of Autonomous Textile Nodes

A novel, fully-autonomous, wearable, wireless sensor network is presented, where each flexible textile node performs cooperative synchronous acquisition and distributed event detection. Computationally efficient situational-awareness algorithms are implemented on the low-power microcontroller present on each flexible node. The detected events are wirelessly transmitted to a base station, directly, as well as forwarded by other on-body nodes. For each node, a dual-polarized textile patch antenna serves as a platform for the flexible electronic circuitry. Therefore, the system is particularly suitable for comfortable and unobtrusive integration into garments. In the meantime, polarization diversity can be exploited to improve the reliability and energy-efficiency of the wireless transmission. Extensive experiments in realistic conditions have demonstrated that this new autonomous, body-centric, textile-antenna, wireless sensor network is able to correctly detect different operating conditions of a firefighter during an intervention. By relying on four network nodes integrated into the protective garment, this functionality is implemented locally, on the body, and in real time. In addition, the received sensor data are reliably transferred to a central access point at the command post, for more detailed and more comprehensive real-time visualization. This information provides coordinators and commanders with situational awareness of the entire rescue operation. A statistical analysis of measured on-body node-to-node, as well as off-body person-to-person channels is included, confirming the reliability of the communication system.

Wearable Flexible Lightweight Modular RFID Tag With Integrated Energy Harvester

A novel wearable radio frequency identification (RFID) tag with sensing, processing, and decision-taking capability is presented for operation in the 2.45-GHz RFID superhigh frequency (SHF) band. The tag is powered by an integrated light harvester, with a flexible battery serving as an energy buffer. The proposed active tag features excellent wearability, very high read range, enhanced functionality, flexible interfacing with diverse low-power sensors, and extended system autonomy through an innovative holistic microwave system design paradigm that takes antenna design into consideration from the very early stages. Specifically, a dedicated textile shorted circular patch antenna with monopolar radiation pattern is designed and optimized for highly efficient and stable operation within the frequency band of operation. In this process, the textile antennas functionality is augmented by reusing its surface as an integration platform for light-energy-harvesting, sensing, processing, and transceiver hardware, without sacrificing antenna performance or the wearers comfort. The RFID tag is validated by measuring its stand-alone and on-body characteristics in free-space conditions. Moreover, measurements in a real-world scenario demonstrate an indoor read range up to 23 m in nonline-of-sight indoor propagation conditions, enabling interrogation by a reader situated in another room. In addition, the RFID platform only consumes 168.3 μW, when sensing and processing are performed every 60 s.

Design of a Wearable, Low-Cost, Through-Wall Doppler Radar System

A novel, low-cost, low-weight, wearable Doppler radar system composed of textile materials and capable of detecting moving objects behind a barrier is presented. The system operates at 2.35 GHz and is integrable into garments, making it well-suited for usage in difficult to access terrain, such as disaster areas or burning buildings. Wearability is maximized by relying on flexible, low-weight, and breathable materials to manufacture the key parts of the system. The low-complexity Doppler radar system makes use of an array of four textile-transmit antennas to scan the surroundings. The beam emitted by this array is right-hand circularly polarized along all scanning angles and provides a measured gain of 9.2 dBi. At the receiving end, textile materials are used to develop an active wearable receive antenna, with 15.7 dBi gain, 1.1 dB noise figure, left-hand circular polarization, and a 3 dB axial ratio beamwidth larger than 50°. Several measurement setups demonstrate that the onbody system is capable of detecting multiple moving subjects in indoor environments, including through-wall scenarios.

Indoor Off-Body Wireless Communication: Static Beamforming versus Space-Time Coding

The performance of beamforming versus space-time coding using a body-worn textile antenna array is experimentally evaluated for an indoor environment, where a walking rescue worker transmits data in the 2.45 GHz ISM band, relying on a vertical textile four-antenna array integrated into his garment. The two transmission scenarios considered are static beamforming at low-elevation angles and space-time code based transmit diversity. Signals are received by a base station equipped with a horizontal array of four dipole antennas providing spatial receive diversity through maximum-ratio combining. Signal-to-noise ratios, bit error rate characteristics, and signal correlation properties are assessed for both off-body transmission scenarios. Without receiver diversity, the performance of space-time coding is generally better. In case of fourth-order receiver diversity, beamforming is superior in line-of-sight conditions. For non-line-of-sight propagation, the space-time codes perform better as soon as bit error rates are low enough for a reliable data link.

A Personal, Distributed Exposimeter: Procedure for Design, Calibration, Validation, and Application.

This paper describes, for the first time, the procedure for the full design, calibration, uncertainty analysis, and practical application of a personal, distributed exposimeter (PDE) for the detection of personal exposure in the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) downlink (DL) band around 900 MHz (GSM 900 DL). The PDE is a sensor that consists of several body-worn antennas. The on-body location of these antennas is investigated using numerical simulations and calibration measurements in an anechoic chamber. The calibration measurements and the simulations result in a design (or on-body setup) of the PDE. This is used for validation measurements and indoor radio frequency (RF) exposure measurements in Ghent, Belgium. The main achievements of this paper are: first, the demonstration, using both measurements and simulations, that a PDE consisting of multiple on-body textile antennas will have a lower measurement uncertainty for personal RF exposure than existing on-body sensors; second, a validation of the PDE, which proves that the device correctly estimates the incident power densities; and third, a demonstration of the usability of the PDE for real exposure assessment measurements. To this aim, the validated PDE is used for indoor measurements in a residential building in Ghent, Belgium, which yield an average incident power density of 0.018 mW/m².

Threefold Rotationally Symmetric SIW Antenna Array for Ultra-Short-Range MIMO Communication

A high-performance, three-element substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) cavity-backed slot antenna array that covers the (5.15-5.85) GHz band is designed for integration inside or underneath the worktop of a desk, to set up a stable, high data-rate ultra-short-range 3 × 3 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication link with a mobile user (MU) positioned on top of that worktop. The antenna topology and array geometry are carefully selected to maximally exploit the multiplexing capabilities of the ultra-short-range 3 × 3 MIMO channel over a wide bandwidth, yielding an increased channel capacity and/or reduced power consumption. In addition, special care was taken to guarantee a channel capacity that is less dependent on the relative orientation of the MU. Furthermore, the SIW implementation technology is combined with innovative antenna materials to guarantee a low-profile, low-cost, stable, and high-performance broadband array design that maintains its excellent performance after integration. A prototype of the antenna array was fabricated, integrated according to two different integration scenarios, and validated. Measurements prove that the antenna array allows integration into a worktop with only a minor influence on its return loss and mutual coupling, guaranteeing a bandwidth of at least 1.078 GHz and a minimum isolation between antenna elements of 30 dB within the entire (5.15-5.85) GHz band.

Improved reception of in-body signals by means of a wearable multi-antenna system

High data-rate wireless communication for in-body human implants is mainly performed in the 402–405 MHz Medical Implant Communication System band and the 2.45 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical band. The latter band offers larger bandwidth, enabling high-resolution live video transmission. Although in-body signal attenuation is larger, at least 29 dB more power may be transmitted in this band and the antenna efficiency for compact antennas at 2.45 GHz is also up to 10 times higher. Moreover, at the receive side, one can exploit the large surface provided by a garment by deploying multiple compact highly efficient wearable antennas, capturing the signals transmitted by the implant directly at the body surface, yielding stronger signals and reducing interference. In this paper, we implement a reliable 3.5 Mbps wearable textile multi-antenna system suitable for integration into a jacket worn by a patient, and evaluate its potential to improve the In-to-Out Body wireless link reliability by means of spatial receive diversity in a standardized measurement setup. We derive the optimal distribution and the minimum number of on-body antennas required to ensure signal levels that are large enough for real-time wireless endoscopy-capsule applications, at varying positions and orientations of the implant in the human body.

Channel characterization and robust tracking for diversity reception over time-variant off-body wireless communication channels

In the 2.45 GHz band, indoor wireless off-body data communication by a moving person can be problematic due to time-variant signal fading and the consequent variation in channel parameters. Off-body communication specifically suffers from the combined effects of fading, shadowing, and path loss due to time-variant multipath propagation in combination with shadowing by the human body. Measurements are performed to analyze the autocorrelation, coherence time, and power spectral density for a person equipped with a wearable receive system moving at different speeds for different configurations and antenna positions. Diversity reception with multiple textile antennas integrated in the clothing provides a means of improving the reliability of the link. For the dynamic channel estimation, a scheme using hard decision feedback after MRC with adaptive low-pass filtering is demonstrated to be successful in providing robust data detection for long data bursts, in the presence of dramatic channel variation.