Multiple Antenna Reception at 5.8 and 10 GHz for Body-Centric Wireless Communication Channels

On-body communication has numerous applications in the context of personal communications systems. Multiple antenna reception is an effective way to combat fading and improve the performance. This paper describes the improvement achieved by using two antennas at the receive side for on-body communication channels. Three different types of antennas are used at 5.8 and 10 GHz to analyze the diversity performance. Diversity gains and correlations are calculated and diversity performance of the antennas at the two frequencies is compared. The repeatability and reliability of the measurements and the uplink and downlink diversity is also discussed. High diversity gains are achieved for most of the channels and almost similar at both the frequencies.