Dual-Discrete Processing for Bit-Error-Rate OTA Testing in Shadowing-Fading BAN Channels

This letter presents an experimental methodology for bit-error-rate over-the-air testing to evaluate the communication quality of body area network (BAN) antennas. We proposed a dual-discrete control method to detect an instantaneous bit error rate (BER) using a fading emulator with a dynamic human phantom. Particular emphasis is placed on how to implement the proposed method while simultaneously considering the dynamic BAN channel and multipath effects. The empirical results show that the proposed method replicates a realistic arm-shadowed fading channel with both instantaneous and average BER characteristics.