BAN Communication Quality Assessments Using an Arm-Waving Dynamic Phantom Replicating the Walking Motion of a Human

This paper presents a newly developed arm-waving dynamic phantom that can simulate the walking and running motion of a human. The arm-waving phantom has unique features, in that waving of the right and left arms and the direction and speed of waving can be controlled independently, leading to excellent capability to replicate a variety of natural walking and running styles of an average human. Using the phantom, we have attempted to develop a dynamic channel characterization for BAN systems, such as shadowing properties and path loss characteristics, when the geometrical relationships between the arms and the human body change continuously due to the movement of the arm for both off-body and on-body situations. Furthermore, assessments of the communication quality, such as the signal bit error rate, have been conducted in order to gain useful knowledge about the way in which arm-waving has a significant impact on the performance of body-attached BAN devices.