Statistical characterization of the dynamic narrowband body area channel

A statistical characterization of the narrowband dynamic human on-body area channel, with application to biomedical/health information monitoring, is presented based on measured received signal amplitude. We consider varying amounts of body movement, and a variety of transmit-receive pair (Tx-Rx) locations on the human body. The characterization is presented for two different frequencies, near the 900 MHz and 2400 MHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands. Common distributions used to describe fading statistics are compared to the received signal component for nine different Tx-Rx pair locations for the subjectpsilas body standing, walking and running. The Lognormal distribution provides a good fitting model, particularly when the subjectpsilas body is moving. The fit is independent of Tx-Rx pair locations. The Rayleigh distribution is a very poor fit to the received signal amplitude statistics.