Summary
International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation
2012
Session Number:3E1
Session:
Number:3E1-4
On Point Source and Observation Modeling for Path Loss Calculation Using FDTD Method
Jun-ichi Naganawa, Minseok Kim, Jun-ichi Takada,
pp.-
Publication Date:2012/10/29
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
Body Area Network (BAN), which connects vital sensor nodes on and inside a human body wirelessly, is a promising technology for future health care. Because BAN should provide reliable links, radio channel property in the vicinity to the human body should be studied intensively. Simulation using FDTD (Finite-dierence Time-domain) method is one of the common approaches. Simulation using FDTD, however, is technically challenging in that real antennas and a human body have different scales. Specifically, the real antennas are too small compared to the human body so that the modeling and simulation with the appropriate cell size is difficult. Although the techniques to separately simulate the antennas and the human body have been proposed, instead of the real antennas using a point source and point receivers as infinitesimal dipoles is also informative from the viewpoint of implementation cost and generalizing the discussion. However, in the case of the point source and the point receivers, the calculation of the path loss from the FDTD result have not been discussed well. In this context, this paper makes three contributions: first, this paper points out the importance and the difficulty of the path loss calculation for a point source and point receivers, showing an intuitive but wrong example. Second, this paper proposes the simple and accurate path loss calculation method, which is composed of two steps: source conversion and power conversion. Third, this paper validates the proposed method analytically and by simulation.