Reliable MIMO communication between firefighters equipped with wearable antennas and a base station using space-time codes

Off-body wireless data communication using textile antennas integrated into clothing increases the safety of rescue workers operating in an indoor environment as vital information can be communicated to the command station. The indoor radio propagation is influenced by fading and shadowing. Yet, MIMO techniques significantly enhance the reliability of such a wireless link, producing a lower bit error rate for the same total transmitted power. Body-worn antennas experience different shadowing dependent on the body size. The performance of the MIMO link is measured for three persons of substantially different sizes and the results are compared based on outage probability and bit error rate curves. A demodulation and detection of actual transmitted data is also provided.