Flexible Metasurface Loaded Felt Substrate Built Wearable Antenna with Tri-band and High Gain Features for WBAN Applications
摘要
A low-profile tri-band wearable antenna is presented in this study. The unique features of the proposed antenna design are as follows: (i) With the assistance of dual U-formed printed lines, the proposed wearable antenna works in three different frequency bands, i.e., 2.4 GHz, 3.5 GHz, and 5.5 GHz; and (ii) the single metasurface placed on the backside of the antenna reduces the specific absorption rate (SAR) by more than 90% and improves the antenna gain (4.55 dBi) in all three operating bands. The designed aerial and metasurface have total size of 46.12 × 51.8 × 1.3 mm3 and 90 × 90 × 1.3 mm3, respectively. Experimental results confirm that the designed aerial operates at 2.4–2.59 GHz, 3.15–3.76 GHz, and 5.1–5.9 GHz. Furthermore, it was shown that the radius of curvature has no effect on the functioning of the developed antenna, which makes it ideal for on-body measurements. Additional studies on low-cost felt substrate-based antennas for wireless body area network (WBAN) applications may be motivated by this concept.