Design and Analysis of a Dual-Band Wearable Antenna Integrated with an AMC Reflector for Biomedical Applications

With an aim to propose a cost-effective and compact design solution for antennas to be employed in wearable biomedical applications, a coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed dual-band flexible antenna integrated with a \(4\times 4\) array of artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) unit cells is conveyed in this article. Adopting a new method of using a single substrate’s upper and lower surfaces for designing the radiator and AMC reflector array, on the one hand, added compactness to the structure by removing the thick separator layer between the antenna and the reflector. While on the other hand, it also eliminated the requirement of a separate layer of expensive RO 3003 substrate for AMC. The designed antenna system operates in the Wi-Fi and ISM bands, centered around 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz, respectively, with impedance bandwidths of 1.09 GHz (2.2 GHz–3.29 GHz) and 690 MHz (5.41 GHz–6.1 GHz). Improvements of 2.5 dBi and 7.7 dBi are recorded in the peak gain values of the integrated antenna system at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz, respectively, after employing a reflector of \(4\times 4\) array of AMC unit cells. The evaluation of the performance of the designed antenna in an equivalent human body environment and its proximity effects on the human body is estimated by using a layered equivalent model of the human body. Maximum Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) values, averaged over 1 g of human tissue at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz, are found to be 0.0033 W/kg and 0.00178 W/kg, respectively.