On-body signal propagation in WBANs for firefighters personal protective equipment: Statistical characterization and performance assessment

Abstract

The time-variant nature of the Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) channels turns unclear if the application's Quality of Service (QoS) requirements can be guaranteed. This paper provides an on-body signal propagation statistical characterization, following a scenario-based approach, and a communication performance evaluation of several wearable devices, which are attached to a Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) garment. Performance assessment, which relies on both Packet Error Rate (PER) test and Link Margin (LM)-based evaluation, identifies channels that do not meet QoS requirements. The analysis of the received power attenuation in real scenarios and channel time-dependencies features, achieved in channel characterization, identifies links that are subjected to poor on-body propagation conditions. This study shows that some channels meet the QoS requirements, but communications are not energy-efficient. Thus, solutions able to explore the channel time-dependencies are suggested in order to reduce the energy consumption on wireless communications, without sacrificing other requirements.