Propagation Model for Fresh Food: Fundamental Principle and Measurement Analysis

Abstract: The global fresh food tracking system (FFT) is widely used service based on monitoring a set of primary environmental conditions during the transportation of fresh food using the GSM, RFID and WSN. In order to provide design guidelines for such devices, it is therefore important to develop effective channel model and see how the fresh food affects the transmitted electromagnetic signals. In this thesis, we are mainly focusing on the channel measurements for different boxes of fresh food (potatoes) by measuring the channel at 2.4GHz and 865MHz in anechoic chamber and in indoor environment. Considering the optimum transmitter and receiver antenna, the Vector Network Analyzer and Spectrum analyzer are used for the collecting a substantial amount of measurements. During the measurements, both the channel impulse response and channel time variation was considered for computing different metrics that are mainly based on large scale fading and small scale fading. The simulation of channel model was done using the log-distance pathloss model and two filtered Gaussian model on Matlab. Finally, the measurement results were compared with simulated results for different boxes of fresh food and both models showed good match with obtained measurements, thus producing an efficient channel model.