Off-body Channel Measurements at 2.4 GHz and 868 MHz in an Indoor Environment

This paper presents an off-body wireless channel measurement campaign at 2.4 GHz and 868 MHz in an indoor laboratory environment. The performance of different 2.4 GHz antennas is evaluated and it is found that chest-mounted directional patch antennas result in an average of 4 dB higher channel gain than horizontally polarised omnidirectional ones. Comparison of propagation at 2.4 GHz and at 868 MHz shows that when omnidirectional on-body antennas are used in both bands, the lower frequency results in an average of 5 dB higher channel gain. However, when directional patches are employed at 2.4 GHz, the advantage of the 868 MHz is only about 1 dB. Finally, a measurement-based channel model suitable for narrowband system-level simulations is presented.

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