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Statistical Path-Loss Model for On-body Communications at 94 GHz

Alessio Brizzi, Student Member, IEEE, Alice Pellegrini, Lianhong Zhang, Member, IEEE, and Yang Hao, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractA great amount of work on antennas and propagation for body-centric wireless communication has been studied at frequencies up to X band; however, on-body radio propagation at millimeter/sub-millimeter wave frequencies still remains largely unexplored. This paper presents a study of onbody radio propagation at 94 GHz, particularly focusing on the analysis of specific channels such as waist-to-torso and head-toshoulder links. Measured data are compared with results obtained with numerical simulations emphasizing the sensitivity of the simulated path loss to the positioning of the receivers with respect to the human body. Index TermsOn-body propagation, millimeter waves, path loss, ray tracing. millimeter/sub-

I. INTRODUCTION

wireless communications are now regarded as a well-established subject area, with many published papers addressing different aspects related to antennas and propagation [1]-[3]. In particular, on-body radio propagation is related to the Body Area Networks (BANs), in which human subjects are considered as a communication medium, in contrast with conventional indoor/outdoor communications, where they are just considered as electromagnetic scatterers and sources of fading [4]-[6]. BANs are relevant to a wide range of applications, of both military and civil relevance, including augmented reality, vital signs monitoring and interactive entertainment [7], [8]. One of these is the development of advanced dismounted infantry, which includes various wireless devices integrated in the soldiers gear (clothes, weapons, armor) [9], [10], aimed at increasing its performance and effectiveness. Many BAN antennas and onbody propagation studies have been focused on 2.4 GHz, 5.8 GHz and UWB bands [1], [11]-[13], while various groups have devoted themselves to the study of network topology and transmission protocols [14]-[16]. Although antennas and radio propagation for on-body communications at frequencies up to X band have been studied extensively, research interests in higher frequency
Manuscript received June 15, 2012. This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), under Grant EP/I009019/1. A. Pellegrini, A. Brizzi, L. Zhang and Y. Hao are with the Antennas and Electromagnetics Group, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London, London, E1 4NS UK, (e-mail: yang.hao@eecs.qmul.ac.uk ).

ODY-CENTRIC

bands are still growing, particularly at mm-wave/sub-mmwave frequencies. Indeed, on-body propagation at 60 GHz has been recently studied [17]-[19]. This interest is justified by the following reasons. First of all, the use of higher frequencies would enable broadband mobile communications with an extremely high data rate, required, for instance, in case of realtime audio and video streaming. Moreover, a shorter wavelength allows the realization of more compact devices, which is of paramount importance in the design of wearable devices. MM/sub-mm waves also demonstrate higher freespace attenuation with respect to microwaves: from the point of view of the security, this is an important feature, which allows to confine the wave propagation in the proximity of the human body, thus limiting the possibility of interference with other systems and, in military and defense, reducing the probability of interception by hostile forces [20]. A further advantage of mm-waves is the limited interaction with biological tissues, reducing possible concerns relevant to electromagnetic exposure of the human body [21]. This is particularly due to the fact that, at these frequencies, the penetration depth into the human tissues gets smaller and, thus, it minimizes the absorption of waves generated by onbody devices. However, this is an area subject to further studies and it is out of the scope of this work. Finally, the possibility of avoiding requesting licenses is likely to be a strong incentive to the widespread implementation of mm-wave BAN systems: for this reason, the frequencies around 60 GHz and 94 GHz raise particular interest. In fact, many countries allow the unlicensed use of a portion of the spectrum of up to 7 GHz around 60 GHz [22], which allows data rates greater than 2 Gbit/s. Moreover, in the USA the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allows the use of the frequencies between 92 and 95 GHz for unlicensed indoor applications [23], [24] and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was invited to follow this indication. An additional advantage of these two bands is that they do not seem to be good candidates for point-to-point long range multi-Gbit/s links [25], [26]: this reduces the risk that such frequency bands get overcrowded by an excessive amount of applications. In addition, the high free space loss also contributes to the reduction of the BAN-to-BAN interference. Table I reports the calculation of path losses in free space for various distances

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < relevant to body-centric systems at 94GHz. On the other hand, although the atmospheric absorption increases with the frequency [27], its contribution to the on-body link is still negligible at the considered distances.
TABLE I ATMOSPHERIC ABSORPTION AND FREE SPACE PATH LOSS AT 94GHZ FOR BODY CENTRIC COMMUNICATION LINKS Distance [m] 0.3 1 5 10 Atmospheric Absorption [dB] 1.5e-4 5e-4 2.5e-3 5e-3 Free Space Path Loss [dB] 61.4 71.9 85.9 91.9

However, the use of mm-waves for on-body applications presents significant challenges. If the high free space attenuation helps in confining the energy around the human body and mitigates the risk of interference, it also results in high attenuation on the transmitter-receiver link. The free space attenuation over a 50 cm link increases from 34 dB at 2.45 GHz to 62 dB and 66 dB at 60 GHz and 94 GHz respectively. The wavelength, which is equal to 5 mm at 60 GHz and 3.2 mm at 94 GHz, also makes the human body a scatterer with extremely large electrical dimensions: this may introduce heavy fades due to shadowing effects, as the loss of the line-of-sight (LOS) link is highly possible in relation to movements of human body parts. A further point that differentiates BANs at mm-waves from those at lower frequencies is that the presence of clothing cannot be considered negligible, as the majority of investigations at lower frequencies have implicitly or explicitly implied [1], [28], [29]. The typical thickness of clothes, ranging from tenths of millimeter up to a few millimeters, is comparable to the wavelength at V and W bands, and it has been demonstrated how their presence can affect the power transmission coefficient between air and skin at 60 GHz [21]. For the above mentioned reasons, the on-body environment is potentially hostile to the propagation of millimeter waves. Therefore, the characterization of the propagation channel is urgently needed for the development of reliable mm-wave BANs. So far, modeling of the propagation channel up to frequencies at the X band has been relying mainly on measurement campaigns and full-wave simulations based on the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method [28], [30]-[34]. If at these frequencies the FDTD has the advantage of being able to take into account both in-body and off-body propagation, at mm-wave frequencies such an approach does not seem to be feasible: the electrical dimensions of the human body (in the order of hundreds of wavelengths) make the computational burden of an FDTD simulation extremely high. In addition, the penetration depth is small [35], [36], resulting in a remarkable fraction of the computational time being spent to calculate the negligible field inside the human body. Therefore, the use of ray-based methods has been considered [17], [18]. The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary path loss

characterization for on-body communication at 94 GHz and to evaluate the tradeoff between experimental investigation and numerical prediction. This is achieved through the investigation of the on-body propagation channel over the head-shoulder and waist-torso links at 94 GHz. A measurement campaign has been carried out, considering various positions of the receiver on the shoulder and the chest area and the collected data have been compared with the ones obtained by using ray-based methods applied to a similar body centric scenario. In addition, measured data have been compared with similar results obtained at lower frequencies [37]. Finally, in order to evaluate the sensitivity of the methodology to the position of the receivers, two different grids of receivers were considered for the waistto-chest link: a planar and a conformal one. The commercial software Remcom XGTD [38], which implements a combination of GO (Geometrical Optics) and UTD (Uniform Theory of Diffraction), has been used to analyze the aforementioned links. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the measurement campaign carried out on the investigated channels. In Section III the numerical simulation has been described and in Section IV a comparison between the simulated data and the measured ones has been shown. The conclusions are drawn in Section V.

II. EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION Two standard flanged rectangular waveguides (WR-10) at 94 GHz have been used as transmitter and receiver by placing them in proximity of a human subject in different reciprocal positions. These antennas present a less directive pattern compared to the commercially available W-band horn antennas and, therefore, they appear to be less sensitive to the misalignment between the transmitter and the receiver. The path loss relative to two different links has been measured: the head-shoulder link and the waist-torso link. In the former case, the transmitter antenna has been fixed on the head of the subject, above the ear; the receiver has been placed near the shoulder, on the same side of the head, in correspondence of several distances from the transmitter (Fig. 1a). In the latter case, the transmitter has been placed on the left side of the belt and the receiver has been moved in order to scan a grid of different positions placed parallel to the body in the chest area (Fig. 1b). The dimensions of the grid have been chosen in order to cover the torso area; in particular, the grid is set to be 30 cm by 36 cm. The spacing (equal to 3 cm) has been fixed in order to obtain a good tradeoff between having a sufficient amount of data and limiting the measurement time. The distance between the center of the waveguide and the body surface is 1cm, resulting from the flange of the waveguide plus a thin spacer to avoid direct contact between the waveguide and the human subject. The measured data were collected on a conformal grid due to the body curvature. Both the transmitter and the receiver have been placed on top of the cloths. Fig. 2 shows the

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < measurement setup without the presence of the human subject (a), and with the human subject for the waist-to-torso link (bc) and for the head-to-shoulder link (d). The absorbers used to minimize scattering from the measurement system were removed in (d) for a clearer visualization of the set-up. The waist-torso link has been investigated considering the human subject wearing two different types of clothes: a thin cotton T-shirt and a thick wool sweater. The measurements of the path loss for the described links have been carried out by using the system setup depicted in Fig. 3. A Continuous Wave (CW) generator has been used to generate a signal at 10.4 GHz, which represents the input for the frequency multiplier.

This module extracts the 9th harmonic of the 94 GHz signal and combines it with the one generated by the Local Oscillator (LO) in order to obtain a reference signal at a frequency of 20 MHz, which represents the input for the Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). On the receiving path, the second waveguide (WR-10) is remotely controlled by a mechanical scan with a precision of 0.1 mm. The 9th harmonic of the received signal is combined with the one generated by the LO in order to obtain a test signal again at 20 MHz. Finally, the VNA allows comparing the received signal with the reference one, both at 20 MHz, in order to obtain the path loss in terms of S21 parameter.

TX
RX

Multiplier 94 GHz

Directional Coupler

RX
TX

CW 10.4 GHz

9th Harmonic Mixer

LO 10.4 GHz

9th Harmonic Mixer

Vector Network Analyser

(a)

(b)

Fig. 1. Position of transmitter and receiver: head-shoulder link (a) and waisttorso link (b).

S21
Fig. 3. Measurement system for evaluation of path loss over the waist-torso and head-shoulder links.

The signal at 94 GHz, output of the multiplier, is decoupled by the 20 dB directional coupler. This module provides both the feeding for the open-end rectangular waveguide WR-10 and the input signal for the mixer.

Firstly, the head-shoulder link has been considered; in order to scan the shoulder area, the receiving antenna has been moved covering four different distances from the head. The measured path loss has been reported in Table II.
TABLE II HEAD-SHOULDER MEASURED PATH LOSS FOR DIFFERENT DISTANCES Head-shoulder distance [mm] 24.0 26.0 28.0 30.0 Measured Path Loss [dB] 36.5 39 40.8 41

(a)

(b)

For what concerns the waist-torso link, the propagation channel has been investigated in terms of path loss exponent and shadowing factor according to the following model [39], [40]: ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (1)

(c) (d) Fig. 2. Measurement setup: no human subject (a), waist-to-torso link (b-c) and head-to-shoulder link (d).

where PL(d0) is the estimated path loss at the reference distance d0 between transmitter and receiver, is the path loss exponent and N(0,) is a normal distribution which has zero expectation and standard deviation , representing the shadowing factor. Actually, several statistical models have been considered for the latter, and the t-location scale distribution reveals to be the best fit according to the Loglikelihood criterion. However, the discrepancy between

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < this distribution and the normal one is less than 5%. Therefore, a normal distribution of the shadowing factor has been here considered to avoid increasing the complexity of the model. By observing the previous formula, it can be noticed that the path loss is assumed to be dependent on the logarithm of the distance d between the transmitter and the receiver, normalized to the minimum distance d0 between the two antennas. According to the linear model expressed in (1), the path loss exponent , which allows taking into account the propagation in a complex environment, is equal to 2 for propagation in free space and is expected to be higher for propagation in presence of scatterers and obstacles. Two sets of measured data have been obtained considering the human subject wearing firstly a thin cotton T-shirt and then a wool sweater. The measurements have been carried out considering a minimum distance d0 of 10 cm. The two sets of measured data have been plotted in Fig. 4. According to the sensitivity of the instruments, path loss contributions higher than 80 dB have been neglected. By considering the above mentioned figure, in order to obtain the path loss exponent of the measured data, the linear regression has been calculated. In particular, in the case of the data shown in Fig. 4, relative to the measurements performed on a human subject wearing a thin cotton T-shirt, the path loss exponent is 4.4; in the case of the human subject wearing a thicker wool sweater (Fig. 4), the coefficient in (1) is equal to 4.5. The higher value in the case of a wool sweater is probably due to the combination of different dielectric and geometrical properties with respect to the previous scenario. The higher electrical conductivity of wool with respect to cotton, and the larger thickness of the sweater in comparison with the T-shirt make the space close to the human trunk more adverse to propagation. The Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of the shadowing factor N(0,,), obtained according to (1), is shown in Fig. 5 for the two measured sets of data. In the case of the measurements performed on the human subject wearing a cotton T-shirt, the standard deviation of the curve which fits the data is equal to 6.4, while in the case of the wool sweater the same parameter is equal to 8.7. The increase in the shadowing factor confirms that the propagation channel is significantly affected by the presence of clothes. A comparison with the results obtained by Sani et al. [37], [43] at 2.4 GHz in a similar scenario is shown Table III. Due to the dependence of the electromagnetic properties of the human tissues on the frequency, in the two referred cases, the dielectric permittivity and the electrical conductivity are respectively higher and lower than the correspondent ones at 94 GHz (Table IV) [36]. Paper [37] analyses four different antennas (microstrip rectangular patch, planar monopole, point source and inverted L), and the mean values of and have been reported in the Table III. In [43] various subjects are considered: out of them, Male 02 is very similar to the subject of the measurements of the present investigation (1.78 m height per 74 Kg weight), and the relevant values are reported in the same table. It can be

noticed how both the path loss exponent and the shadowing factor are higher in the 94 GHz scenario, even if the antenna considered in this work presents a greater gain and a good omnidirectionality over the area of interest. This can be ascribed to the bigger electrical dimensions of the obstacles over the body surface (curvature of waist, stomach and chest), which increase the scattering and obstruct the propagation.
TABLE III COMPARISON OF PATH LOSS EXPONENT AND SHADOWING FACTOR AT 2.4 GHZ AND 94 GHZ Analyzed Scenario Hugo Model [37] Male 02 [43] Cotton t-shirt Wool sweater Frequency (GHz) 2.4 2.4 94 94 Pathloss Exponent 3.8 2.8 4.4 4.5 Shadowing Factor 5.2 3.9 6.4 8.7

TABLE IV ELECTROMAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF DRY SKIN AND MUSCLE AT 2.4 GHZ AND 94 GHZ [36] Frequency 2.4 GHz 94 GHz
90 80 70
Path Loss [dB]

Dry Skin r 38.06 5.79

Dry Skin [S/m] 1.44 39.18

Muscle r 52.79 9.01

Muscle [S/m] 1.70 61.46

60 50 40 30 20 10
Measured data (Wool Sweater) Linear regression (=4.51) Measured data (Cotton T-shirt) Linear regression (=4.36)

0 0 2 4
10log(d/d0)

Fig. 4. Measured path loss for the waist-torso link: human subject wearing a cotton T-shirt (blue) and human subject wearing wool sweater (red).

Fig. 5. Cumulative Distribution Function of the shadowing factor for measured data.

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < III. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS The numerical analysis has been performed by using the software RemCom XGTDv2.5 which implements a combination of Geometrical Optics and Uniform Theory of Diffraction (GO-UTD). The modifications of the radiation patterns of the antennas due to the proximity of the human body have been taken into account.

cotton (1 mm of thickness). In the latter model a layer which has the electromagnetic properties of the wool replaces the one which represents the cotton fabric. In addition, a model entirely made of dry skin has been considered for a comparison. In Table V the electromagnetic properties and the thicknesses of each material have been considered [36], [42].
TABLE V ELECTROMAGNETIC PROPERTIES AND THICKNESS OF THE LAYERED STRUCTURE Material Dry Skin Cotton Wool Air Relative Dielectric Constant 5.79 1.5 2 1 Electric Conductivity [S/m] 39.18 0.01 0.1 0 Thickness [mm] 30 1 5 1

Fig. 6. Digital phantom of a male human body.

A. Numerical Model The investigated numerical model, shown in Fig. 6, is shaped to have dimensions similar to the subject of the measurement campaign, and consists of a 3-dimensional surface composed by triangular facets. This model has been obtained by means of the statistical analysis of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans of a population of several human subjects which present different ranges of shape [41]. In order to take into account the electromagnetic properties of the tissues and the fabrics, the model has been considered as a stratified structure. In particular, three different areas can be distinguished according to the clothes worn by the human subject used for the measurements. Considering the small penetration depth at the investigated frequency of 94 GHz [30], the body has been assumed as having the dielectric characteristics of dry skin: hence the fictitious thickness of 30 mm assigned to the skin layer. Following this assumption, the parts uncovered by the clothes, such as the head, are associated to a single layer of skin.

As described in the previous section, the path loss of two different sets of reciprocal positions of the transmitter and the receivers has been evaluated. In order to simulate a scenario as similar as possible to the measurement setup, the transmitter and receiver positioning described in Section II (Fig. 1) has been replicated. For the waist-to-torso link, both a flat and a conformal grid of receivers have been taken into account. It is worth mentioning that in the case of the flat grid, the transmitter does not lay on the plane defined by the receivers; therefore the LOS condition is not guaranteed for all the receivers. The two grids were considered in order to evaluate how the agreement between simulated and measured results changes according to the accuracy of the simulated scenario. Setting a conformal grid is, in fact, a very time-consuming process, and it has to be repeated every time when a different numerical phantom is considered. If it is accurate enough, the use of a flat grid would otherwise be useful to speed up the analysis process. B. Pattern Evaluation in proximity of the human body In a typical body-centric scenario, the antennas are required to operate in proximity of the human body. Therefore, depending on both the shape and the electromagnetic properties of the human body at the investigated frequencies, the performance of the antennas, in terms of radiation pattern, can be affected. In order to take into account this effect, a simulation of the flanged rectangular waveguide, used in the measurement setup, operating in proximity of a slice of skin, has been performed in CST Microwave Studio. As described in Section II, for both the investigated links, the antenna can assume two different positions with respect to the human body. In particular, the E plane of the rectangular waveguide is orthogonal to the body when the transmitter is placed on the head. Transmitters and receivers placed in the area of the shoulder, of the chest and of the belt, exhibit the E plane parallel to the body. In order to address this issue, the flanged rectangular waveguide has been simulated in proximity of the human body according to the two above described reciprocal positions. Therefore, a flat digital phantom which presents the properties of the dry skin (Table V) has been placed parallel and orthogonal to the E

Wool Air Dry Skin

Cotton Air

Dry Skin

(a) (b) Fig. 7. Layered model: according to the position of the clothes, three different areas of coverage can be distinguished.

In order to have as much similarity as possible between the simulated scenario and the measured one, two models wearing thin cotton T-shirt and a wool sweater have been considered. As indicated in Fig. 7, the former is represented by a layer of dry skin, a layer of air (1 mm of thickness) and a layer of

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < plane of the waveguide, as indicated in Fig. 8 (a) and Fig. 8 (b), respectively. In order to evaluate whether additional losses related to the impedance mismatch due to the proximity of the human body should be considered, the distance between the antenna and the body has been set to different values. An S11 lower than -10dB has been observed in every case; therefore the impedance mismatch of the flanged waveguide used in this study does not affect the path loss evaluation. The radiation patterns, evaluated on the E and H plane, of the flanged waveguide operating near a vertical and a horizontal digital phantom are shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 respectively. By referring to the these figures, it is important to note that the symmetry of the radiation pattern is not preserved on the E or on the H plane, according to the operative conditions of the antenna in proximity of the human body.

Remcom XGTD and then assigned to both the transmitter and the receiver. The transmitting and receiving antenna have been aligned according to the polarization of the electric field, as indicated in Fig. 11 (a)-(b) for both head-shoulder and waisttorso link. In order to achieve a good trade-off between numerical accuracy and computational burden, in addition to the direct ray, 4th order contributions for reflected rays and 1 st order contribution for the transmitted ray have been taken into account. Moreover, contributions due to wedge and surface diffraction have also been considered.

(a)

(b)

(a)

(b)

Fig. 8. Flanged rectangular waveguide operating in proximity of a slice of human body: E plane parallel to the skin (a) and E plane orthogonal to the skin (b).

(c) Fig. 11. Antenna position for head-shoulder link (a) and for waist-torso link (b). Head of digital phantom with ear (c).

IV. COMPARISON OF RESULTS To evaluate the reliability of the ray-tracing technique for predicting on-body radio propagation, a comparison between the measured and simulated data has been carried out. Firstly, the head-shoulder link has been examined. The simulated path loss has been compared with the measured one (Table II) for four different transmitter-receiver distances; the results are shown in Table VI. Both the cases with and without the presence of the ear (Fig. 11 (c)) have been considered. Moreover, a comparison between the data obtained by considering a model entirely made of dry skin and a model wearing woolen fabrics, described in Section III (a), has been shown in Table VI, as well. By referring to Table VI, it can be noticed that, for the considered link there are no significant differences between the path loss values obtained by considering human body models made of different materials. For what concerns the comparison with the measured data, it is important to note that for the head-shoulder link, the transmitter and the receiver are in Line of Sight (LoS) for each investigated reciprocal position, therefore the direct ray represents the main contribution to the path loss calculation.

(a) (b) Fig. 9. Gain of the flanged rectangular waveguide operating in proximity of a vertical slice of dry skin: E plane (a) and H plane (b).

(a)

(b)

Fig. 10. Gain of the flanged rectangular waveguide operating in proximity of an horizonthal slice of dry skin: E plane (a) and H plane (b).

The evaluated radiation patterns have been imported in

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TABLE VI COMPARISON BETWEEN SIMULATED AND MEASURED PATH LOSS FOR THE HEAD-SHOULDER LINK AT DIFFERENT DISTANCES FOR DIFFERENT CLOTHES
WITH AND WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF THE EAR

with respect to the case of the model characterized only by dry skin.
TABLE VII PATH LOSS CALCULATION FOR MEASURED AND SIMULATED DATA Simulated Considered Simulated Measured (conformal surfaces (flat grid) grid) Dry skin N.A. 3.7 4.5 Dry skin + cotton 4.4 3.7 4.7 T-shirt Dry skin + wool 4.5 4.2 4.8 sweater TABLE VIII SHADOWING FACTOR CALCULATION FOR MEASURED AND SIMULATED DATA Simulated Considered Simulated Measured (conformal surfaces (flat grid) grid) Dry skin N.A. 8.0 8.9 Dry skin + cotton 6.4 8.8 9.1 T-shirt Dry skin + wool 8.7 7.1 8.3 sweater

Analyzed scenario Measured Path Loss Simulated Path Loss (wool sweater model) Simulated Path Loss (dry skin model) Simulated Path Loss (wool sweater model) + ear Path Loss (dry skin model)+ear

distance [cm] 24.0 36.5 52.4

distance [cm] 26.0 39.0 46.7

distance distance [cm] 28.0 [ [cm] 30.0 40.8 38.9 41.0 45.4

52.5

46.8

41.0

45.3

25.7

36.8

41.8

41.0

25.7

38.2

40.7

41.3

The presence of the ear makes the model more realistic, indeed diffraction from the ear affects the path loss evaluated at each receiver providing very accurate results compared with the measured ones. On the other hand, this analysis confirms that the 24 cm link is more critical than the others. The disagreement in the data could be due to mis-shaped antenna radiation pattern associated with the transmitter and the receiver. In the specific case of the minimum distance here considered (24 cm), the difference in the measured and simulated path loss is mainly due to the proximity of the head. Indeed the local orientation of the facets can strongly affect the propagation direction of the rays. In this latter case, the contribution due to multiple bounces or diffracted rays become more significant, and a small difference between the real and simulated scenario can bring to a remarkable punctual discrepancy between the two. However it is worth mentioning that the head-to-shoulder link has validity in the light of a preliminary point-to-point analysis. In fact, this link is strongly affected by the movements of the head: therefore it requires a detailed statistical analysis, which is out of the scope of the present paper and will be the subject of future investigations. Subsequently, results for the waist-torso link have been compared with the measured ones in terms of path loss exponent as described in Section II. Fig. 12 shows path loss values, obtained as a function of the logarithm of the normalized distance between the transmitter and the receiver, for both a conformal and flat grid, relative to three different cases: the model has the properties of dry skin, cotton T-shirt and woolen sweater. In Fig. 13 the CDF of the shadowing factor, expressed in (1), evaluated in three simulated cases, is shown. The comparison between simulated and measured data is summarized in Tables VII and VIII in terms of path loss exponent and shadowing factor of data. The simulated data have been obtained considering both a flat and a conformal grid of receivers. By observing the data shown in Tables VII and VIII, it can be noticed that the presence of thin cotton T-shirt does not significantly affect the estimation of the path loss exponent

In addition, by comparing the simulation results, obtained with a flat and a conformal grid, higher values of the path loss exponent can be noticed in the latter case. This phenomenon is, as expected, mainly due to the higher number of shadowed receivers. In the case of a flat grid, the discrepancy between simulated and measured path loss exponent is 16% and 7% for the Tshirt and wool case respectively. In the case of a conformal grid the percentage of discrepancy is now reduced to about 7% for both fabrics. Furthermore, in both measurement and simulation with the conformal grid there is only a 2% increase in when changing from cotton T-shirt to wool sweater, while in the case of a flat grid the increase is 13.5%. On the other hand, it can be noticed how, in the simulations, the decreases when the human subject clothing changes from the T-shirt to the wool sweater, while it demonstrates an opposite trend from the measurements, therefore highlighting the limitation in the accuracy of the ray-tracing methods in the investigated scenarios. A further limitation in the use of the ray-tracing method is the discrepancy in the values of PL (d0): although the punctual values at the reference distance agree with the measured ones, the linear regression yields a lower value. V. CONCLUSION An investigation of a body-centric scenario performed at 94 GHz has been shown in this paper. To this aim a campaign of measurements has been performed in presence of a human subject. In addition, in order to investigate the reliability of ray-based techniques applied to the study of BANs, simulations have been carried out by using Remcom XGTDv2.5. The path loss obtained by the simulation has been compared with the measured one. For what concerns the headshoulder link, the discrepancy between measured and

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < simulated data is mainly due to the difference in reproducing the human subject head.
90 80 70
Path Loss [dB]

60
50 40 30 20
Simulated data (Dry Skin Flat Grid) Simulated data (Dry Skin Conformal Grid) Linear regression Flat Grid (=3.7) Linear regression Conformal Grid (=4.5)

10
0 0 1 2 3

4
10log(d/d0)

(a)
90
80 70
Path Loss [dB]

Fig. 13. Cumulative Distribution Function of the shadowing factor for simulated data

60
50 40 30

20
10 0 0 1 2 3

Simulated data (Cotton T-shirt Flat Grid) Simulated data (Cotton T-shirt Conformal Grid) Linear regression Flat Grid (=3.7) Linear regression Conformal Grid (=4.7)

4
10log(d/d0)

(b)
90
80 70

60
Path Loss [dB]

50 40

30
20 10
Simulated data (Wool Sweater Flat Grid) Simulated data (Wool Sweater Conformal Grid) Linear regression Flat Grid (=4.2) Linear regression Conformal Grid (=4.8)

0 0 1 2 3 4
10log(d/d0)

(c) Fig. 12. Simulated path loss for the waist-torso link by using both a conformal and a flat grid: human subject made of dry skin (a), human subject wearing a cotton T-shirt (b) and human subject wearing wool sweater (c).

In fact, as demonstrated in the case where the ear is modeled, a better agreement between measurements and simulations is achieved. Additionally, the analysis points out that the proximity of the transmitter with respect to the head plays a key role in the accuracy of the results. The local orientation of the facets in the model can strongly affect the path of the rays from the transmitter and the receiver.

This effect is more visible when the collected data are not enough to trace a statistical analysis while a value-to-value comparison is required. In addition, the simulations have demonstrated that the presence of clothes in the numerical model, such as the wool sweater, does not significantly affect the path loss. For what concerns the waist-torso link, the comparison of the path loss exponent model obtained both for the simulated data (in the case of a flat and a conformal grid of receivers) and measured ones has been discussed. A linear regression of the data has been evaluated in terms of path loss exponent and shadowing factor and a normal distribution has been considered to model the latter. A discrepancy of the path loss exponent between 16% and 7% is obtained for the T-shirt and wool case respectively for a flat grid of receivers. This discrepancy is dramatically reduced to 7% for both fabrics in the case of a conformal grid of receivers. However, discrepancies in other statistics were observed, such as PL (d0) and shadowing factor. In general, although the numerical model has shape and dimensions similar to the human subject used for the measurements, the exact geometry of the curvatures of the body and the details of the clothes were not exactly reproduced. These differences between the measured and simulated scenarios, at the investigated frequencies, contribute to perturb the propagation from the transmitter to the receiver. In addition, another uncertainty in on-body measurements can result from the modification of the radiation pattern of both transmitting and receiving antennas in proximity of the human body. This effect can be accounted in the simulation by incorporating a more realistic radiation pattern, however small changes depending on the particular positions are difficult to replicate. In the light of these considerations, the statistical analysis presented here demonstrates that a ray tracing technique is suitable for a macroscopic description of a body centric scenario, such as the path loss exponent calculation over the trunk area. On the other hand, the agreement between measured and simulated data has an extremely strong dependency on the accuracy of the simulated scenario, in

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> REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PAPER IDENTIFICATION NUMBER (DOUBLE-CLICK HERE TO EDIT) < terms of body shape and positioning of the antennas. Besides, the analysis presented in this paper shows that, in order to possibly obtain a generalized path loss model that can provide accurate link budget evaluation for different subjects, a complete and thorough investigation of the path loss variation with body shape and garments would be required. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank EPSRC for providing the funding for this research activity, under Grant EP/I009019/1, Dr Su-Lin Lee, and Professor Guang-Zhong Yang at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London, for providing the digital phantom. The authors would like also to thank Dr. Anestis Katsounaros and Mr. Max Munoz, both with the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London, for their precious support in this work. Finally, the authors would like to thank Prof. Peter Hall for the fruitful discussions. REFERENCES
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a satellite communication engineer with ST Teleport, Singapore. He has been working as a postdoctoral research assistant in antenna and electromagnetics lab, school of electronic engineering and computer science, Queen Mary, University of London since July 2010. His research is in the areas of millimetre wave imaging for concealed target detection, body-centric wireless communications at millimetre band, indoor radio propagation channel characterization, building material characterization, and nanoantenna for ultrafast coherent control of optical fields. Yang Hao received the Ph.D. degree from the Centre for Communications Research (CCR) at the University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K., in 1998. He is currently a Professor of antennas and electromagnetics in the Antenna Engineering Group, Queen Mary College, University of London. He is active in a number of areas, including computational electromagnetics, electromagnetic band-gap structures and microwave metamaterials, antennas and radio propagation for body centric wireless networks, active antennas for millimeter/sub-millimeter applications and photonic integrated antennas. He is a co-editor and co-author of the books Antennas and Radio Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications (Artech House, 2006), and FDTD modelling of Metamaterials: Theory and Applications (Artech House, 2008), respectively. Prof. Hao is an Associate Editor for the IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, International Journal of Antennas and Propagation and a honorary editor for the Chinese Journal of Radio Science. He was also a CoGuest Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION. He is a vice chairman of the Executive Team of IET Antennas and Propagation Professional Network. He is also a member of Board of the European School of Antenna Excellence, a member of EU VISTA Cost Action and the Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and Metamaterials, Metamorphose VI AISBL. He has served as an invited (ISAP07, LAPC07, IWAT08) and keynote speaker (ANTEM05, IWAT10), a conference General Chair (LAPC08, Metamaterials09), a Session Chair and short course organizer at many international conferences. He is a holder of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award between 2013 and 2018. Prof. Hao was elected as a Fellow of the ERA Foundation in 2007, a Fellow of the IET in 2010 and a Fellow of the IEEE in 2013.

Alessio Brizzi received the degree in Telecommunication Engineering from University of Pisa in 2003. He worked for three years as a contractor for the Microwave and Radiation Laboratory at University of Pisa, subsequently moving to a consulting company as technical consultant. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary, University of London. His research focuses on millimeter waves for body-centric communications, specifically on the characterization and modeling of the propagation channel, and on the design of antennas for on-body systems. His research topics also include numerical modeling and nanocommunications.

Alice Pellegrini received the Laurea degree (cum laude) in Telecommunication Engineering in Applied Electromagnetics from University of Pisa, Italy, in October 2005. She achieved the PhD in Information Engineering at the Microwave and Radiation Laboratory, within the Information Engineering Department of the University of Pisa, in May 2009. Her main research activity concerned the study of innovative numerical methods and hybrid techniques, based on Mode Matching, Finite Element Method combined with the Spectral Decomposition approach, for analysing Frequency Selective Surfaces and finite large phased arrays of radiating apertures. Currently, she is enrolled as PostDoctoral Research Assistant at Queen Mary University of London, with the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Her main activities are relevant to analysis, simulation and measurements in the field of Body Area Network (BAN) applications at millimetre waves with particular interest in the application of high frequency ray-based techniques. She has been co-organizer of Special Session on BodyCentric Wireless Communications at PIERS 2013 in Stockholm. Lianhong Zhang obtained BSc and MSc in radio physics, electronic science and engineering department, Nanjing University, China, MSc and PhD in electronic engineering from school of electronic engineering and computer science, Queen Mary, University of London. From 1995 to 1997, he was an antenna engineer with Aerospace & Aeronautical Corporation, Shanghai, China. From 1997 to 2005 he was

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