Antenna Optimization for Decode-and-Forward Relay in Magnetic Induction Communications

Magnetic Induction (MI) communication is effective in underground tunnels for emergency rescue vehicle due to the small-size antenna. It can highly benefit from a cooperative decode-and-forward (DF) relay to achieve a higher data rate. However, its channel gain is extremely position-and-orientation-selective. The unreachable space increases the complexity of the antenna deployment. To find the best antenna position and orientation (PO) of the relay achieving the higher data rate, this paper formulates the optimization problem of the relay MI antenna PO with tunnel constraints. To solve the problem more quickly, we propose to use geometric modeling to eliminate the tunnel constraints and develop a random-search algorithm achieving a fast convergence and excellent global search ability. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm can quickly converge to one optimum which signifies a noticeable improvement of data rate for vehicle MI systems with weak signals.