Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of a 60-GHz Off-Body Propagation Model

Abstract

A fast computation and accurate analytical model for off-body propagation is derived in this paper. The paper discusses the off-body model propagation from an external source to a receiver located on the body. The model is developed for normal incident plane wave by describing the human body with a circular cylinder. We show that the total received electric field around the human body can be written as a creeping wave in the shadow region and as a Geometrical Optics result for the lit region. It is also shown that at 60 GHz, the shadow boundary width is negligible. The model shows perfect agreement with the experimental results conducted on a perfectly conducting cylinder. Measurements of the creeping wave path gain have been also conducted on a real body to assess the validity of the cylinder assumption. The results have shown a path gain of about 5 dB/cm for TM case and 3 dB/cm for TE case. The standard deviation between the measurements and the cylindrical model is about 3.5 dB for both TM and TE cases.

Statistical On-Body Measurement Results at 60 GHz

“…Specific on-body 60 GHz channels have been investigated [5], [6] and some preliminary results for path gain on the body have been presented [7]. Static propagation models for off-body [8] and on-body [9] 60 GHz communications have already been studied and a skin-equivalent phantom at 60 GHz has been proposed to validate plane-propagation models [10]. This paper proposes an experimental study to characterize path loss and shadowing between two body mounted devices and the fading due to breathing at 60 GHz.…”

An Insight into Creeping Electromagnetic Waves around the Human Body

“…Wireless links where the body surface takes the role in transmission channel are generally considered to allow for deterministic modelling to some extent, which gives rise to research in Norton and creeping waves (see, e.g., [2][3][4][5][6][7]). To provide an adequate canonical electromagnetic model, human body is typically modelled as cylindrical, spherical, or elliptical [6] structure representing either the torso or head, where link budget around the body is studied in various circumstances both numerically and experimentally.…”

“…Instead of using full geometrical optics calculations [4], the purpose of this paper is to gain an intuitive insight into the scattered field around the human body torso in terms of creeping waves. Thus we develop a simple model of propagation for on-body communication link by focusing on the most dominant effect which predicts general behaviour and attenuation of the electric field around the human body.…”

Path loss models for indoor off-body communications at 60 GHz

“…Recently, renewed interest has been generated towards the use of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technologies for body centric and wearable systems [1][2][3][4][5]. Advancements in this area mean that it will soon be feasible to use operating frequencies in the 59-66 GHz range to provide high bandwidth capabilities for these applications.…”