Abstract
In order to find the best solution of physical layer for medical wireless body area network (WBAN), two single-band ultra wideband (UWB) systems are studied, i.e., direct sequence ultra wideband (DS-UWB) and ultra wideband frequency modulation (UWB-FM). UWB is considered to be one of the most feasible techniques among those that can be applied to medical WBAN since it provides low power consumption, simple transceiver structure and good coexistence characteristics due to a low power spectral density. The simulation results indicate that UWB-FM has better performance than non-coherent DS-UWB in overall. It was expected that coherent DS-UWB with multiple rake fingers gives the best results, and this was justified by the simulation results.