Fading and Rician K-factor in the Ultra Wideband Footwear-Centric Body Area Network

The fading and Rician K-factor in UWB Body Area Networks (BANs) is explored. It compares the traditional waist-centric approach with a novel footwear-centric architecture. The recently introduced footwear-centric architecture considers locating the central hub (data aggregator) in the footwear and it was shown to be comparable or superior to the waist-centric approach in terms of path-gain. This paper shows that this conclusion also applies to the fading severity and the Rician K-factor. Thus it is concluded that the footwear centric network is a feasible alternative for novel UWB BANs.