Flexible and Small Textile Antenna for UWB Wireless Body Area Network

In this paper, a miniaturized textile microstrip antenna is proposed for wireless body area networks (WBAN). The ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna used a denim substrate to reduce the surface wave losses. The monopole antenna consists of a modified circular radiation patch and an asymmetric defected ground structure, which expands impedance bandwidth (BW) and improves the radiation patterns of the antenna with a small size of 20 x 30 x 1.4 mm(3). An impedance BW of 110% (2.85-9.81 GHz) frequency boundaries was observed. Based on the measured results, a peak gain of 3.28 dBi was analyzed at 6 GHz. The SAR values were calculated to observe the radiation effects, and the SAR values obtained from the simulation at 4/6/8 GHz frequencies followed the FCC guideline. Compared to typical wearable miniaturized antennas, the antenna size is reduced by 62.5%. The proposed antenna has good performance and can be integrated on a peaked cap as a wearable antenna for indoor positioning systems.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a miniaturized textile microstrip antenna for wireless body area networks (WBAN), which uses a denim substrate to reduce surface wave losses. The monopole antenna, consisting of a modified circular radiation patch and an asymmetric defected ground structure, expands impedance bandwidth and improves radiation patterns. The antenna has a small size of 20 x 30 x 1.4 mm(3) and an impedance bandwidth of 110% (2.85-9.81 GHz). The proposed antenna shows a peak gain of 3.28 dBi at 6 GHz and meets the FCC guideline for SAR values at 4/6/8 GHz frequencies. Compared to typical wearable miniaturized antennas, the proposed antenna reduces size by 62.5% and can be integrated on a peaked cap for indoor positioning systems.