Study on the impact of the body shadow effect in wireless channels through dosimetry measurements

© 2017 IEEE. The body shadow effect (BSE) is defined as the underestimation in logged data by personal exposimeters (PEMs) when the PEM is worn by the user (on-body location) that obstructs the direct signal path between the measuring device and the radiation source. This study considers the levels of exposure at 2.4 GHz, measured by PEMs, as a received signal composed of three fading components: path loss, local mean fading, and small scale fading. Two cases are analyzed: when the PEM is worn by the user, and when the PEM is situated 1 m away from the user. Although the lognormal distribution presents the best suitability in the transmitter-to-receiver and transmitter-to-body channels, the fading components present particular features in shadowing conditions: the local mean fading signal does not change drastically, but the instantaneous levels, of small scale fading have a greater variation, especially when in proximity to the radiation source. The different features of the fading components in the shadowed and non-shadowed exposure data, is a reason to question the effectiveness of the correction factors in mitigating the BSE uncertainty.