2017 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications

Low-profile horizontal omni-directional antenna for

LoRa wearable devices
L.H. Trinh1, , T.Q.K. Nguyen2,3 , H.L. Tran1 , P.C. Nguyen1 , N. V. Truong4 , F. Ferrero2
1
University of Information Technology - Vietnam National University HCM, Vietnam
2
University Cote d’Azur, CNRS, LEAT, UMR 7248, France
3
Bach Khoa University - Vietnam National University HCM, Vietnam
4
Institute of Applied Mechanics and Informatics, Vietnam
Email: huytl@uit.edu.vn

Abstract—In this paper, a novel antenna suitable for wearable

LoRa devices is introduced. Its size is just 42.5 x 45 mm2 , similar
to the size of a watch, thanks to the advantage of a wire-patch
antenna structure. The proposed antenna operates at 868MHz
frequency band with the realized gain up to 0.4 dBi. This antenna
is proved to be better than former designs by obtaining azimuthal
polarization which reduces effects from human body. In addition,
its polarization is circular, thus loss from polarization mismatch
is expected to be minimized.
Keywords - LoRa, wearable device, circular pattern, horizontal
polarization.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Nowadays, with the boom of the Internet of Things, or
IoT, the world is promptly getting connected. Although former
communicating systems are advanced enough for linking peo-
ple regardless of distances, there should be an improvement
for system of Machine to Machine communication (M2M).
Thereby, Semtech introduced LoRa, standing for Long Range
communications. This system is perfectly adaptable to require-
ments with two main criteria: long communication range and
low power consumption. Meanwhile, low data rate problem is
this technology’s drawback. However, there are a lot of IoT
applications that don’t need to transmit the big size packet
such as: environment monitoring (temperature, air pressure,
humidity...) for smart agriculture, geolocation (longitude, lati-
tude...) for smart transportation or appliance status (on, off...)
for smart home and more. Thus, LoRa technology low data
rate transmitting cause no severe problem. About the working
frequencies, LoRa operates at 433MHz, 868MHz in Europe
and 915MHz in America. Besides, its bandwidth is narrow,
normally smaller than 5MHz.
In detail, a LoRa device can satisfy these following con-
ditions: Firstly, it has the ability to transmit and receive
signals for a distance of about 20km in line-of-sight condition.
Therefore, a LoRa network can cover a very large area and
function with multiple nodes. Secondly, LoRa device can be
usable for up to 10 years without changing its battery. It
ensures reliability of system. Main disadvantage is low data
rate - it can only transmit up to 50kbps. However, it is proved
to be sufficient for most of IoT applications.
One of LoRa plausible applications is for wearable devices,
which requires compact and low profile qualities of its antenna.
Fig. 1. The antenna dimensions without substrate
An antenna design from Ferrero et al. is taken into account,
it is very good design for portable devices which fit inside
a very small volume. Nevertheless, it has linear polarizations
together with vertical patterns thanks to characteristic of IFA
used [1]. Therefore, this design is not suitable for wearable
devices because antenna efficiency can be reduced due to
the vicinity of user hands coinciding with vertical pattern.
Meanwhile its linear polarization can easily lead to polar-
ization mismatch. When the existence of hand is concerned,
there will be a remarkable distortion for antenna pattern due
to power absorption of hand. It leads to the reduction in
quality factor [2]. In addition, the antenna efficiency will
be degraded and functioning frequency is expecting to be
lowered [3]. There were several previous works on minimizing
body effect on antenna performance. For instance, in [3]
Valkonen et al. have used RF switch and capacitance sensors
to choose radiated one between two antennas for mobile
application. Likewise, Anguera et al. have used multi-element
configurations approach for their improvement [4]. Inspired
by the idea of making a better antenna for wearable devices,
the authors have applied a wired patch [5] prototype with
modifications to create antenna with circular polarization and
horizontal pattern.
Next section will present the antenna design with details
about sizes and structure. In third section, both simulation and
experiment result will be shown to verify a good agreement

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 2017 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications
Fig. 2. Structure of the proposed antenna with FR-4 substrate
Phi sweeper @Theta=90
Theta sweeper @Phi=90
90°
120° 60°
150°
−8 −6 −4 −2
180°
210°
240° 300°
270°
Fig. 3. Radiation pattern of the proposed antenna
between them. Finally, in conclusion, a small discussion about
perspective for further researches and applications for this kind
of antenna will be proposed.
II. A NTENNA DESIGN
Despite its unpopularity, wire-patch antenna has some very
interesting keypoints worth noticing. Firstly, it can obtain
a dipole-like radiation pattern while keeping a low-profile
structure thank to its special geometry. Secondly, ground can
be reduced in a small size - it usually has the same size of
the patch. Compare to well-known dipole or patch kind of
antenna, wire-patch will have a great improvement because it
can reduce not only the height of dipole but also the area of the
ground of patch while keeping the good properties of them.
This advantage constitutes to the compact feature of wearable
devices, such as watches [5]. A good example of antenna
design based on this kind is from Lizzi et al. In his design,
one driven wire-patch and three parasitic ones are used for
pattern reconfiguration. Thank to dipole-like pattern property
of wire-patch and function of three Digital Tunable Capacitor
(DTC), three horizontal patterns are achieved and it totally
suits Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) application.
The proposed antenna basing on wire-patch type has a
symmetrical geometry with two short strips and a hollow
patch, shown in Fig 1. Initially, the hollow patch is created
30° Fig. 4. Like-dipole radiation pattern of the proposed antenna
for a screen module to be put inside. However, there are some
0 key points should be considered that compared to plain patch,
0°
hollow patch antenna will have resonance frequency lowered
and more narrow bandwidth [6].
The total space for antenna, ground and substrate of pre-
330° sented device can fit inside a box with sides of 45 x 42.5 x
5.5 mm, so it can be wear by hand. Thickness of the substrate
is 0.8 mm ( = 4.4 and tanδ = 0.02). Antenna’s patch
can be divided into two parts, one forward (above ground,
45 x 36.5 mm) and one backward (above nothing, 45 x 6
mm). The forward patch is the main patch, which decides the
resonance while backward patch is used to balance antenna’s
pattern. Both of them are hollow patch. To increase length of
antenna’s strip, two slot-like parts are symmetrically added in
main patch, each occupies an area of 3 x 6 mm . The width of
strip around the hollow is 1.5mm for main strip while 1mm
around the slot and in backward side, including joint strip .In
addition, a tunable capacitor is integrated at the end of strip.
Its value can be adjusted to help antenna reaching desired
resonance. In this case, a resonance at 868MHz is achieved
with 1pF value of the capacitor.
Antenna’s patches are connected with ground through a
vertical plate, one driven strip and two short strips. Vertical
plate is in rectangular shape 12 x 5.5 mm. Each short strip
has a length of 4 mm and a width of 1mm. For convenience
in manufacturing, there is also a substrate layer above hollow
patch and behind vertical bar, serving as a skeleton for device.
III. S IMULATION RESULTS
The antenna was designed and simulated using HFSS from
Ansoft. This software provides an effective way for solving 3D
structure problems and for optimizing results. The antenna’s
real performance is assured not having many deviations from
simulation results.
Antenna resonance is tuned using capacitor in Fig. 5. To
make explanation short, three values of capacitor are consid-
ered: 0.7pF, 1pF and 1.3pF respectively. From Fig. 5, operating
frequency can be observed to shift from 865MHz to 868MHz
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 2017 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications
0
1.3 pF
1.0 pF
0.7 pF
−5
-6
Return Loss (dB)
−10
−15
−20
−25
860 865 870 875
Freqency (MHz)
Fig. 5. Return loss as a function of tunable capacitor value
Fig. 6. Return loss as a function of antenna height
and return to 867MHz while increasing capacitive value. On
the other hand, antenna bandwidth in each case is nearly
3MHz. Consequently, a capacitor of 1pF will be used for
later measurements because frequency band at this value fits
the Lora band. Besides, a good antenna efficiency is obtained
within this band. Concretely, it is in the vicinity of -1.07dB
as shown in Fig. 9.
To better understand how the antenna works, some para-
metric studies are made. For instance, if shifting sizes are
tolerable, height of antenna can be adjusted from 2mm to
6mm to see a range of resonance from 770MHz to 920MHz
like in Fig. 6. The higher the antenna height is applied,
the higher the resonance is. In case of there is a need to
tune resonance frequency without changing overall sizes of
device, shorts can be considered properly. In Fig. 7, there is
a good range for tuning, approximately 100MHz by varying
shorts’ width. Alternatively, changing position of short can
Fig. 7. Return loss as a function of distance between short and feed
880
Fig. 8. Return loss as a function of short width
make resonance move from nearly 850MHz to 900MHz, Fig.
7. However, while changing on short’s width makes nearly
linear results, changing on short’s position creates a non-
function. Consequently, there should be a appropriate analytic
with several simulation checks to obtain desired resonance. In
all three figures concerned above, the red lines match at right
frequency of 868MHz. From the simulation results, the way
that antenna operates can be explained clearly.
Besides, main objective of making a dipole-like pattern is
achieved as shown in Fig. 3, in which total gain is a function of
direction (φ, θ). In azimuthal plane, total gain is maximized in
all direction, with value of approximately 0,63dB. In vertical
direction, there is minimum gain transmitted. Therefore, when
antenna is placed in parallel with human body surface, the
effect stated in * is expected to be reduced significantly.
Fig. 11 shows distributions of current along the antenna’s
strips and on the ground. On the main strip, the highest current
is near the feed, and it reduces gradually along strip line, then
reaches lowest value at the capacitor. Thus, it again confirms
the dependence of antenna resonance on length of main strips.
However, the horizontal pattern is mainly obtained by the
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−1.02
−1.04
Antenna Efficiency (dB)
−1.06
−1.08
−1.1
−1.12
860 865 870
Freqency (MHz)
Fig. 9. Antenna Efficiency
Fig. 10. Axial Ratio @θ = 160◦
current on the vertical plate, as can be seen in Fig. 12.
From Fig. 10, some minimum axial ratios can be extracted.
It is obvious that at θ = 160◦ and 340◦ , axial ratios are very
small, within the band from 860MHz to 880MHz. It means that
the proposed antenna can radiate circular polarization in these
directions.Moving θ to 90◦ or 270◦ axial ratio turn higher,
meaning that we get linear polarization in principle H-plane.
It can be predicted for a dipole like radiation pattern.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a new antenna structure is proposed. Thanks
to its wire-patch geography, an overall small size is achieved.
Hence, this antenna is totally suitable for wearable applica-
tions. Furthermore, his kind of antenna has also a horizontal
pattern and circular polarization, which guarantees higher
efficiency and lower loss due to absorption from human body.
This paper is dedicated for providing sufficient descriptions of
antenna geometry and performance, together with some studies
of antenna parametries. For further researches, it is possible
that this antenna can cooperate with a simple PIFA and some
875 880
Fig. 11. Surface Current (top view)
Fig. 12. Surface Current (side view)
control components, such as switches or diodes, to make a
pattern reconfigurable antenna.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank UIT’s Faculty of Computer
Engineering and L.E.A.T laboratory and Institute of Applied
Mechanics and Informatics for their full supports to help this
research done.
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[2] J. Ilvonen, O. Kiveks, J. Holopainen, R. Valkonen, K. Rasilainen, and
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