A simulated study of co-channel inter-BAN interference at 2.45 GHz and 60 GHz

The increasing popularity of portable and wearable technology will mean that further demands will be placed on an already overwhelmed radio spectrum, particularly within the unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical bands. Because of this, future short-range body centric technologies may benefit from operation at underutilised frequency allocations in the 60-GHz region of the spectrum. The higher signal attenuation at millimetre-wave frequencies will provide key benefits for body area network users, including spectral re-use over shorter distances as well as reducing the potential for interference in densely populated areas. In this paper we compare the carrier-to-interference ratio for co-located body area networks operating on the same wireless channel. A number of ray tracing simulations are carried out at 2.45-GHz and 60-GHz using a highly accurate CAD model of an indoor environment and human body models generated using animation software. It is shown that the potential for interference between co-located body area network users is significantly decreased at 60-GHz, although this is not open-ended, as increasing the number of nearby body area network users can cause this ratio to fall well below 10 dB.