Measured pedestrian movement and bodyworn terminal effects for the indoor channel at 5.2 GHz

Human body effects such as antenna-body interaction and scattering caused by pedestrian movement are important indoor radio propagation phenomena at microwave frequencies. This paper reports measurements and statistical analysis of the indoor narrowband propagation channel at 5.2 GHz for two scenarios: a fixed line-of-sight (LOS) link perturbed by pedestrian movement, and a mobile link incorporating a bodyworn terminal moving at 0.5 m/s. Two indoor environments were considered for both types of measurement: an 18-m long corridor and a 42 m office. The fixed-link results show that the statistical distribution of the received envelope was dependent on the number of pedestrians present. However, fading was slower than expected, with an average fade duration of more than 100 ms for a Doppler frequency of 8.67 Hz. For the bodyworn terminal results, mean received power values were dependent on whether or not the user’s body obstructed the LOS. For example, in the corridor the average non-line-of-sight (NLOS) pathloss was 5.4 dB greater than with LOS.