A Compact Polyimide-Based UWB Antenna for Flexible Electronics

In this letter, we present a compact ultrawideband (UWB) antenna printed on a 50.8-mu m Kapton polyimide substrate. The antenna is fed by a linearly tapered coplanar waveguide (CPW) that provides smooth transitional impedance for improved matching. The proposed design is tuned to cover the 2.2-14.3-GHz frequency range that encompasses both the 2.45-GHz Industrial, Scientific, Medical (ISM) band and the standard 3.1-10.6-GHz UWB band. Furthermore, the antenna is compared to a conventional CPW-fed antenna to demonstrate the significance of the proposed design. A parametric study is first performed on the feed of the proposed design to achieve the desired impedance matching. Next, a prototype is fabricated; measurement results show good agreement with the simulated model. Moreover, the antenna demonstrates a very low susceptibility to performance degradation due to bending effects in terms of impedance matching and far-field radiation patterns, which makes it suitable for integration within modern flexible electronic devices.