Characterisation of human body and environmental effects on the performance of mobile terminal antennas

Abstract

Provision of efficient services to the user anywhere at anytime is being a centre of research and development in Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). Antenna is the essential part of WPAN/WBAN applications that got affected by two major factors: human body presence and nature of the surrounding environment. The presence of the human body in the proximity of the antenna causes electromagnetic (EM) reflections from the body surface and absorptions in the lossy body tissues resulting in antenna detuning, radiation pattern degradations and impedance mismatch. On the other hand, incident radio waves undergo reflections, difractions and scattering from the surrounding environment objects including buildings, trees, vehicles and ground, causing multipath fading. The thesis gives an overview of the main investigations, results and analyses accomplished in a study concerning the commercially available Bluetooth and GPS antennas working in the vicinity of the human body. Detailed numerical modelling process is adopted followed by measurements for validation. The thesis highlights the role of surface waves as a potential transmission medium in an on-body Bluetooth wireless communication link taking into account the effects of antenna-body separations and presence of the surrounding objects blocking the direct communication path. The thesis also presents a novel statistical model to evaluate the performance of GPS mobile terminal antennas in the multipath environment. This model characterises the antenna performance and identifies the key factors that can be used to enhance it, in a real working environment outside an anechoic chamber. The study also deals with presence of the human body in the multipath environment and its effects on the operation of the GPS antennas.