Performance of different ultra wideband antennas for off-body radio propagation

Comparison of two different receiver antennas for ultra wideband (UWB) off-body radio propagation channels in body-centric wireless communication is presented in this paper. The measurements were performed in an indoor environment using active UWB wireless tags. Two different types of receiver antennas have been used; namely a small form factor (SFF) antenna and compact co-planar waveguide (CPW)-fed tapered slot antenna (TSA) to investigate their effects on the radio channel behaviour. The path loss was modeled as a function of distance. A least square fit method was performed on the measured path loss results to extract the path loss exponent. Results show that a reduction of 29 % path loss exponent is noticed for the SFF antenna.