Polarisation diversity performance for on-body communication applications

This study reports on the measured polarisation diversity performance of on-body communication channels at 2.45 GHz. To perform the measurements, a new dual-polarised antenna was designed and fabricated. The antenna provides polarisations both normal and parallel to the body surface. Measurements were carried out with a subject wearing this antenna and moving in a laboratory environment. Diversity gains were then calculated for both the polarisation states based on the measured data. Reasonable gains of around 5 dB were achieved for the dynamic on-body channels, while static channels show little improvement.