Performance Evaluation of GAM in Off-Body Path Loss Modelling for Body Area Networks

This paper addresses the performance evaluation of an off-body path loss model, based on measurements at 2.45 GHz, which has been developed with the use of the Generalised Additive Model, allowing to model a non-linear dependence on different predictor variables. The model formulates path loss as a function of distance, antennas' heights, antenna orientation angle and polarisation, results showing that performance is very sensitive to the orientation angle and to the polarisation of the transmitting and receiving antennas. Considering the model's global performance, the obtained overall value of the adjusted coefficient of determination equals 0.60, while the mean error and the root mean square error equal 0 dB and 5.6 dB, respectively, which can be considered quite good for such a large diversity of addressed scenarios. One can then conclude that, regardless of the low performance of the method for some particular cases, the overall model accuracy may be considered good.