The path loss established between several wearable antennas placed on a tissue-equivalent phantom is investigated through numerical simulations and measurements. The on-body performance of a previously proposed dual-mode wearable textile antenna, designed to operate in the 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific and medical band, is evaluated and compared with a wearable textile patch antenna. Simulation results of a λ/4 resonant wire monopole are also presented to serve as a reference. Five different scenarios for the location of the transmitting and receiving antennas are analyzed: one with line of sight (LOS), two with nonLOS (NLOS), and the remaining two in the transition between LOS and NLOS. The transmission results are evaluated with the antennas mounted on the surface of a homogeneous phantom with 2/3 muscle properties mimicking the shape and physical macroscopic properties of a human torso. A general good agreement is obtained between numerical simulation and experimental results. It is shown that in the NLOS scenario, the proposed antenna has an equivalent path loss only about 3.4 dB higher than the monopole and about 10 dB lower than the patch.

This paper presents a complete and detailed description of the fabrication and measurement of the electromagnetic properties of water-based semi-solid phantoms with emphasis on the analysis of the time evolution of the complex permittivity of several samples stored in different conditions. A known recipe for a 2/3 muscle equivalent phantom is used as test material, and the several phantom sample properties are measured with an in-house developed coaxial probe technique. It is shown that the storing condition is of paramount importance to extend the lifetime of a given phantom. This behavior stems from the way the storing condition affects the water evaporation rate of the sample. In particular, while an unprotected sample can preserve its electromagnetic properties only for a few days, a very well-sealed one can last at least up to a year.

A LoRaWAN application architecture comprises three functional components: (i) nodes, which convert and wirelessly transmit data as LoRaWAN messages; (ii) gateways, which receive and forward these transmissions; and (iii) network servers, which process the received data for application delivery. The nodes convert data into LoRaWAN messages and transmit them wirelessly with the hope that one or more LoRaWAN gateway will receive the messages successfully. Then, the gateways pass on the received messages to a distant network server, where various processing steps occur before the messages are forwarded to the end application. If none of the gateways can receive the messages, then they will be lost. Although this default behaviour is suitable for some applications, there are others where ensuring messages are successfully delivered at a higher rate would be helpful. One such scenario is the application in this paper: monitoring maritime vessels and fishing equipment in offshore environments characterised by intermittent or absent shore connectivity. To address this challenge, the Custodian project was initiated to develop a maritime monitoring solution with enhanced connectivity capabilities. Two additional features are especially welcome in this scenario. The most important feature is the transmission of messages created in offshore areas to end users who are offshore, regardless of the unavailability of the ground network server. An example would be fishermen who are offshore and wish to position their fishing equipment, also offshore, based on location data transmitted from nodes via LoRaWAN, even when both entities are far away from the mainland. The second aspect concerns the potential use of gateway-to-gateway communications, through gateways on various ships, to transmit messages to the coast. This setup enables fishing gear and fishing vessels to be monitored from the coast, even in the absence of a direct connection. The functional constraints of conventional commercial gateways necessitated the conceptualisation and implementation of C-Mesh, a novel relay architecture that extends LoRaWAN functionality beyond standard protocol implementations. The C-Mesh integrates with the Custodian ecosystem, alongside C-Beacon and C-Point devices, while maintaining transparent compatibility with standard LoRaWAN infrastructure components through protocol-compliant gateway emulation. Thus, compatibility with both commercially available nodes and gateways and those already in deployment is guaranteed. We provide a comprehensive description of C-Mesh, describing its hardware architecture (communications, power, and self-monitoring abilities) and data processing ability (filtering duplicate messages, security, and encryption). Sea trials carried out on board a commercial fishing vessel in Sesimbra, Portugal, proved C-Mesh to be effective. Location messages derived from fishing gear left at sea were received by an end user aboard the fishing vessel, independently of the network server on land. Additionally, field tests demonstrated that a single C-Mesh deployment functioning as a signal repeater on a vessel with an antenna elevation of $15m$ above sea level achieved a quantifiable coverage extension of 13 km (representing a 20% increase in effective transmission range), demonstrating the capacity of C-Mesh to increase LoRaWAN’s coverage.

This paper describes the design, fabrication and test of a novel dual mode, on-body and off-body, planar microstrip antenna for Body Area Networks applications. The on-body antenna is obtained with a microstrip ring operating at a higher order mode while the off-body antenna is obtained with a meandered microstrip antenna. The antennas are fed separately but share a common ground plane and are disposed so that the occupied area is minimized.