Footwear‐centric body area network with directional UWB antenna

Abstract

A footwear-centric body area network employing a directional antenna is compared with waist-centric systems using omnidirectional and directional antennas. The effect of body movements on path gain is analysed for two bands at 3.99 and 7.99 GHz. The path gain and data rate results demonstrate that footwear-centric configurations are equivalent to or better than waist-centric body area networks.

Impact of Hub Location on the Performance of Wireless Body Area Networks for Fitness Applications

“…These results further confirm previous works [7]- [9], which pointed out that the waist/hip may not be the most suitable location for hubs in future WBANs because other locations allow the use of directive antennas which reduce the impact of fading and improve the overall path-gain characteristics.…”

“…In fact, other locations offer additional benefits. For instance, in terms of propagation, it may be advantageous to locate the hub in the extremities of the body (head or foot) because the entire body can be covered by directional antennas [7]- [9]. Integration in the footwear enables extension of battery life by harvesting energy from piezoelectric elements integrated in the footwear [9].…”

Insole Antenna for On-Body Telemetry

“…Emerging opportunities for wearable electronics include sensors for footwear [1][2][3] and associated communications [4] to enable medical [5], occupational [6] and leisure [7] applications. The volume and rigidity of footwear can contain low-profile and conformal components without undue impact on the flexibility of a subject"s foot or natural gait.…”

“…The first reported channel link-reliability for footwear to upper body nodes demonstrated the need to consider system performance [4]. In addition, a 2.4-11.0 GHz spline-shaped monopole antenna printed on 0.2 mm flexible FR4 assessed toe-cap to wrist nodes links [16].…”

On-body fidelity factor for footwear antennas over different ground materials

“…The on-body propagation channel is a dynamic channel considering different body postures [2] and different scenarios, where ground and wall reflections may improve the strength of the receive signal [3]. The human body medium requires that the designer optimizes the antenna geometry as a function of the desired bandwidth and correlates the on-body antenna position with the desired patterns [8]. Considering the guidelines defined in the WBAN standard [9], different constraints on the pulse shape must be respected, described in terms of Fidelity Factor (FF).…”