Bend Profiling of Textile Antenna for Body Centric Wireless Communication

Body-centric wireless communication (BCWC) is assumed as core technology for healthcare and rescue applications which always needs a flexible and bendable antenna for near the body propagation. Multiple technologies terminated on a single antenna with suitable radiation and gain characteristics are the concern of antenna designers from few decades. A wide band antenna, covering variety of frequency bands used for BCWC, is realized and presented. Human body effects on antenna and bend profiling of antenna is analyzed. In addition to flexibility and bending characteristics, easy integration in human clothing is also considered. Copper tape is used as conductive part of the antenna while 1mm thin blue jean is used as dielectric substrate, with relative permittivity of 1.68 and loss tangent 0.01. Various meandering techniques were investigated to enhance the gain and bandwidth of the antenna without effecting antenna performance in near body bent conditions. Parametric analysis confirms the antenna resonance at 2.45GHz with impedance bandwidth of 2.15GHz ranging from 0.8 to 2.95GHz and peak gain up to 4.2dB. The fabricated antenna is tested using Agilent Vector Network Analyzer. Simulated and measured results, of this novel recto-circular antenna showed good agreement proving the propose antenna as a suitable candidate for near body applications.