Thailand-Japan MicroWave 2012

Copyright @2012 by IEICE

Experimental Evaluation of UWB-IR Transmission Performance
Towards Body-to-Body Communication

Adi Mahmud Jaya MARINDRA

Sathaporn PROMWONG

International College, King Mongkuts Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand
Dept. of Telecommunication Engineering, King Mongkuts Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand
E-mail: {s4601102, kpsathap}@kmitl.ac.th
Abstract This paper presents new possibility of ultra wideband (UWB) applications on wireless body area network
(WBAN) towards body-to-body communication which also can be applied for ad-hoc BAN. Using UWB planar monopole
antenna, UWB impulse radio (UWB-IR) transmission performance will be evaluated in two scenarios; without body to without
body, and with body to with body. The performance will be provided by the parameters of waveform correlation, waveform
width stretch ratio, and waveform relative gain. The results show that the presence of human body on both antennas can
possibly increases the UWB-IR transmission performance when the antennas in line of sight (LOS) condition, but it degrades
very significant for Non-LOS condition.
Keyword UWB-IR, WBAN, transmission, planar monopole antenna, body to body.

1. INTRODUCTION
Ultra wideband impulse radio (UWB-IR)
technologies have been considered to be used in
wireless body area network (WBAN) due to its
reliability and efficient power operation. Influenced
by various applications both in medical or
non-medical, numerous literatures have been
published on the study of UWB channel modeling or
on-body UWB antenna characterization.
Investigating from the previous studies,
measurement scenarios are mostly focused on UWB
transmission with a single person, between nodes on
a body or an on-body node to data terminal (without
body). Nevertheless, transmission from a body to
another one (body-to-body) seems also possible to be
applied for other future applications, such as data
transfer between UWB wearable devices or in
implementation of ad-hoc BAN [1]. This context
also can be called as inter-body communication [2].
In this paper, two measurement scenarios are
conducted in free-space environment; (see Section 3).
Transmission performance of each scenario will be
evaluated to compare how far the impact of the
presence of human bodies. It will be provided by the
parameters of waveform correlation, waveform width
stretch ratio, and waveform relative gain [3], [4].

2. UWB-IR TRANSMISSION SCHEME
In UWB-IR transmission, the antennas must
transmit and receive waveform which complies UWB
bandwidth. In this paper, let we consider a
rectangular pass-band waveform fulfilling Japan
low-band UWB bandwidth (3.4-4.8 GHz) as a
transmitted waveform [3]. Channel transfer function
Hc (f) can be obtained from measurement by using
Vector Network Analyzer. Then the received
waveform is
f e f H f V t v
ft j
c t
d ) ( ) ( ) (
2
r
t
}

= (1)
Transmission performance is quantified based on
comparison of quality between the received
waveform using the real antennas and the received
waveform using isotropic antennas. Derivations of
each parameter are given as follow.
2.1. WAVEFORM CORRELATION
Waveform correlation is a measure of similarity
between two waveforms and derived as

} }
}

+
=
-
2
-iso r
-
2
r
-
-iso r r
d | ) ( | . d | ) ( |
| )d (t ). ( * | max
t t v t t v
t v t v
C
t
(2)
It has value between 0 to 1, 0 for orthogonal
waveforms and 1 for totally similar waveforms.
2.2. WAVEFORM WIDTH STRETCH RATIO
The derivation of SR is based on comparing width
(energy distribution) between two waveforms [4].
The normalized cumulative energy function of a
waveform can be written as

| ) (
| ) ( |
E
2
v
t v
t v
t
}

= (4)

Thailand - Japan Micro Wave 2012

Then, the waveform width for p (example: 0.9)
energy portion of waveform is defined by
|
.
|

\
|
|
.
|

\
|
=

2
1
E
2
1
1 E ) W(
1
v
1
v
p p
v (5)
SR is obtained by

( )
( )
-iso r
r
W
W
SR
v
v
= (6)
SR should be nearly to 1 where the higher SR
indicates worse transmission performance.
2.3. WAVEFORM RELATIVE GAIN
Waveform relative gain in this paper is defined as
time domain gain and derived based on how the
channel affects the peak of the waveform amplitude.

| ) ( | max
| ) ( | max
-iso r
r
t v
t v
G = (4)
3. MEASUREMENT SCENARIOS AND SETUP
The measurement scenarios are illustrated in Fig.
1. UWB planar monopole antennas are used as Tx
and Rx. Started from =0
O
(when the antennas/bodies
are facing each other), data are taken for every 10
O

angle rotation of antennas/bodies with
Tx
=-
Rx
.


(a) (b)
Fig.1. Measurement Scenarios (a) Scenario 1, (b)
Scenario 2.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Results of each parameter are depicted in Fig. 2, 3
and 4, respectively. In this paper, the presence of
human body can increase the waveform correlation
when in LOS condition, but it is degraded
significantly between 70
O
to 290
O
. Either are stretch
ratio and waveform gain, they are degraded between
those angles.

Fig.2. Waveform Correlation

Fig.3. Waveform Width Stretch Ratio

Fig.4. Waveform Relative Gain
By seeing all of the quantified parameters,
transmission performance generally will be worse
when the antennas are blocked by human body or in
NLOS condition due to body shadowing.
5. CONCLUSION
This paper discusses UWB-IR transmission
performance for body to body communication. The
presence of human bodies at both Tx and Rx slightly
changes (generally increases) the transmission
performance in LOS condition. However, body
shadowing effect (in NLOS condition) gives bad
impact to the transmission performance.
6. References
[1]A. Lo, Liang Xia, I. Niemegeers, T. Bauge, M.
Russell, D. Harmer, EUROPCOM - An
Ultra-WideBand (UWB)-Based Ad Hoc
Network for Emergency Applications, IEEE
Vehicular Technology Conference VTC Spring,
pp. 6-10, 11-14 May 2008.
[2] T. S. P. See, J. Y. Hee, C. T. Ong, L.C. Ong,
Zhi Ning Chen, Inter-body channel model for
UWB communications, 3
rd
European
Conference on Antennas and Propagation
(EuCAP), pp.3519-3522, 23-27 March 2009.
[3]S. Promwong, P. Supanakoon, J. Takada,
Waveform Distortion and Transmission Gain
Due to Antennas on Ultra Wideband Impulse
Radio, IEICE Transactions on
Communications 2010, vol.E93-B, no.10,
pp.2644-2650.
[4]Do-Hoon Kwon, Effect of Antenna Gain and
Group Delay Variations on Pulse-preserving
Capabilities of Ultrawideband Antennas, IEEE
Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol.
54, no. 8, pp. 2208-2215, Aug., 2006.