Body-centric ultra-wideband multi-channel characterisation and spatial diversity in the indoor environment

This study presents the findings of an empirical channel characterisation for an ultra-wideband off-body optic fibre-fed multiple-antenna array within an office and corridor environment. The results show that for received power experiments, the office and corridor were best modelled by lognormal and Rician distributions, respectively [for both line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) scenarios]. In the office, LOS measurements for t_mean and tRMS were both described by the Normal distribution for all channels, whereas NLOS measurements for t_mean and t_RMS were Nakagami and Weibull distributed, respectively. For the corridor measurements, LOS for t_mean and t_RMS were either Nakagami or normally distributed for all channels, with NLOS measurements for t_mean and t_RMS being Nakagami and normally distributed, respectively. This work also shows that achievable diversity gain was influenced by both mutual coupling and cross-correlation co-efficients. Although the best diversity gains were 1.8 dB for three-channel selective diversity combining, the authors present recommendations for improving these results.