Fading Analysis for BANs in Cylindrical Rooms with Metallic Walls

A fast fading analysis for Body Area Networks operating at 2.45 GHz in cylindrical rooms with metallic walls is presented in the paper. A model was developed, based on geometrical ray bouncing. By using an empirically validated simulator, it is shown that it is enough to analyse up to 2
^nd
order reflections. Additionally, it is shown that the normalised radius (to the wavelength) of the cylindrical room does not have a significant influence on fast fading characteristics. The obtained values for the Rice factor, being negative or very close to 0 dB, show that in this kind of environments fast fading can be characterised by the Rayleigh Distribution.