Propagation Loss Measurement of Wireless Body Area Network at 2.4 GHz and 3.35 GHz Bands

The main purpose of this work is to measure and analyze the propagation loss of the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) in frequency and time domain at two frequency bands, namely 2.4 GHz band with 80 MHz bandwidth and 3.35 GHz band with 500 MHz bandwidth. Four different scenarios (front to front, front to back, front to off-body node and back to off-body node) using many antenna´s locations on the body are used to investigate the channel response (path loss) of WBAN. It is found that the front to front channels and the front to off-body node channels have a low fading. The front to back channels and the back to off-body node channels have a high fading that can be approximated by the Distorted Rayleigh fading. Thus the WBAN range for the front to off-body node scenario is more than the range of the back to off-body node scenario.