Performance evaluation using BER/SNR of wearable fabric reconfigurable beam-steering antenna for On/Off-body communication systems

This paper presents a comparison of communication performance between the reconfigurable beam-steering antenna and the omni-directional (loop) antenna during standstill and walking motion. Both omni-directional and reconfigurable antennas were manufactured on the same fabric (${\varepsilon}_r=1.35$, $tqn{\delta}=0.02$) substrate and operated around 5 GHz band. The reconfigurable antenna was designed to steer the beam directions. To implement the beam-steering capability, the antenna used two PIN diodes. The measured peak gains were 5.9-6.6 dBi and the overall half power beam width (HPBW) was $102^{\circ}$. In order to compare the communication efficiency, both the bit error rate (BER) and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were measured using a GNU Radio Companion software tool and user software radio peripheral (USRP) devices. The measurement were performed when both antennas were standstill and walking motion in an antenna chamber as well as in a smart home environment. From these results, the performances of the reconfigurable beam steering antenna outperformed that of the loop antenna. In addition, in terms of communication efficiencies, in an antenna chamber was better than in a smart home environment. In terms of movement of antennas, standstill state has better results than walking motion state.