BER Performance Analysis of MRC Receive Diversity with Optimal and Rectangular Templates in UWB Off-Body Wireless Body Area Networks.

Short range communications through wireless body area networks (WBANs) is evolving. In particular, in the on-body surface to off-body access node channel model (CM) namely, CM#4 of the IEEE 802.15.6a ultra wideband (UWB) WBAN, the characteristics of the channel are affected by the direction of body rotation. In this paper we investigate the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of correlator receivers with maximal-ratio-combining (MRC) receive diversity in WBAN CM#4 channel. We consider optimal and low-power rectangular template-based receiver alternatives assuming equally probable pulse position modulation (EC-PPM) scheme. We provide closed forms for the BER performance as well as numerical results based on Mote Carlo simulations.