Premium
Bandwidth enhancement of a wearable UWB antenna near a human arm
Author(s) -
Koohestani Mohsen,
Pires Nuno,
Skrivervik Anja K.,
Moreira Antonio A.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.27970
Subject(s) - antenna factor , antenna (radio) , antenna measurement , antenna tuner , bandwidth (computing) , impedance matching , acoustics , antenna efficiency , dipole antenna , coaxial antenna , electrical engineering , materials science , computer science , electrical impedance , engineering , telecommunications , physics
A dielectric sandwich loading technique is proposed to enhance impedance matching bandwidth of an antenna when it is placed close to the human body. This technique mitigates the body influence by confining the reactive fields in the dielectric loads. This has no side effects on the antenna performance. Unloaded and loaded prototypes of a recently developed UWB antenna have been measured both in free space and near a human arm. Free space results confirm that loading the antenna neither detune |S 11 | nor decrease efficiency. It was found that in a body proximity scenario, loading the antenna increases the impedance matching by 22% with respect to the unloaded antenna. These results show the suitability of this technique to design antennas for WBAN applications. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:2965–2967, 2013