Measured Effects of the Human Body on UWB Signal Propagation in an Indoor Environment

摘要

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems were investigated for their ability to operate in dense multipath environments. While a great deal of time and effort has been spent characterizing both the indoor and outdoor UWB channels, the effects of human body interaction with a close proximity UWB antenna remains largely unexplored. Performance measurements of two different commercially available UWB antennae in various indoor multipath environments were conducted. Comparisons of the measurement results using the diamond-dipole antenna indicate that while the human body creates a deep null (23.6 dB) in a light multipath environment, this null is drastically reduced (6.8 dB) in a dense multipath environment. Measurements using the newer BroadSpec antennae did not exhibit a similar effect unless the antenna was severely shadowed.