Wearable Ultrawideband Technology—A Review of Ultrawideband Antennas, Propagation Channels, and Applications in Wireless Body Area Networks

Ultrawideband (UWB) technology can provide short-range, high bandwidth communications at a very low energy consumption level, which is quite attractive for wireless body area networks (WBAN). In such a system, the presence of the human body brings huge challenges for both the design of the wearable antenna and the propagation model. First of all, the coupling between the wearable antenna and the human body should be considered even in the initial steps of the design, in order to be able to deal with both the possibly deteriorating performance of the antenna as a result of the body and the exposure risk for the body. Second, the propagation channel in WBAN is influenced by the continuous movement of the human body, due to the time-varying scattering of the electromagnetic waves. Lots of researchers have been active in this area and some significant progress has been achieved recently. This paper retrospects the latest results in the field of wearable ultrawideband antennas, propagation channels, and their respective application in WBAN systems.