Channel characterization and robust tracking for diversity reception over time-variant off-body wireless communication channels

In the 2.45 GHz band, indoor wireless off-body data communication by a moving person can be problematic due to time-variant signal fading and the consequent variation in channel parameters. Off-body communication specifically suffers from the combined effects of fading, shadowing and path loss due to time-variant multipath propagation in combination with shadowing by the human body. Measurements are performed to analyze the autocorrelation, coherence time, and power spectral density for a person equipped with a wearable receive system moving at different speeds for different configurations and antenna positions. Diversity reception with multiple textile antennas integrated in the clothing provides a means of improving the reliability of the link. For the dynamic channel estimation a scheme using hard decision feedback after MRC with adaptive low pass filtering is demonstrated to be successful in providing robust data detection for long data bursts, in the presence of dramatic channel variation