An Armband-Wearable Printed Antenna with a Full
Ground Plane for Body Area Networks
Syed Muzahir Abbas, Karu P. Esselle
Department of Engineering
Macquarie University
NSW 2109, Australia
syed.abbas@mq.edu.au, karu.esselle@mq.edu.au
Abstract—This paper presents a printed antenna with a full
ground plane, suitable for wearable armbands and other such
body area network devices operating in the industrial, scientific,
and medical (ISM) band (2.45 GHz). Performance and
characteristics are presented along with parametric analyses.
Antenna performance is investigated under conformal bending
over human arm to assess its suitability for armband-type body
centric wireless communication devices. The full ground plane
makes the antenna performance highly insensitive to the gap
between the antenna and the arm. It also reduces electromagnetic
radiation absorption in the arm. The proposed antenna exhibits
a wide radiation pattern along the body surface to provide better
coverage and its narrow width (14mm) makes it suitable for
wearable on-body applications.
Index Terms—Body centric, On-body, Wearable, Human arm,
Printed antenna, ISM, Conformal, Curved.
I. INTRODUCTION
Body Centric Wireless Communication (BCWC) is a
rapidly growing research area targeted for application in
healthcare, public safety and defence [1]. Ambitious projects
like Google smart watch and curve phones promise endless
possibilities for future. Their design needs to address the body
transceiver specifications, the curvature of the body and the
effects of body tissues on antenna performance. Significant
changes in antenna performance characteristics have been
reported when placed close to human body [2]. The challenge
here is to achieve a wide beamwidth over the body and around,
and to make the antenna return loss less sensitive to the
distance between the antenna and the body [3]. Earlier a
compact antenna with a full ground plane was proposed for
body area network devices operating in the ISM band [4, 5].
An electromagnetically coupled feed and stub loading were
used to achieve better impedance matching and to partially fill
a null that was otherwise present towards the direction opposite
to the feed.
In this paper the performance of that antenna under bending
conditions in close proximity to a human arm is investigated. It
was noted that the antenna exhibits a wide radiation pattern in
the plane tangential to body surface to provide better coverage
and its operating frequency band can be controlled by tuning
the stub.
978-1-4799-3540-6/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Yogesh Ranga
CSIRO, Computational Informatics
PO Box 76 Epping 1710,
Australia
yogeshwar.ranga@csiro.au
II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY
Fig. 1(a) shows the geometry of the proposed antenna with
dimensions. The tissue model considered for this research is
shown in Fig. 1(b). The antenna has been designed for a 14 mm
x 100 mm flexible substrate (Arlon IsoClad 933) with a
dielectric constant of 2.33 and a thickness of 1.6 mm. This
antenna consists of two electromagnetically coupled radiating
elements and a full ground plane. Ground plane size is 14 mm
x 100 mm. This full ground plane helps in reducing the
radiation toward the body that can be potentially harmful. Each
radiating rectangular strip has a length of 46.5 mm and a width
of 6 mm. Using two gaps each 0.1mm wide, these strips are
electromagnetically coupled to a 50ȍ microstrip transmission
line feed with dimensions of 13 mm x 2.8 mm.
A pair of stubs each 1mm wide and 25mm long (L=25 mm)
has been incorporated to achieve impedance matching. This
combination of feed and stub also helps to improve null filling
as compared to [3].
(a) (b)
Fig. 1 (a) Geometry of the proposed antenna (b) Simplified elliptical human
arm model (radius=46 mm) with four tissue layers and the conformally bent
antenna above the arm.
III. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Simulations of the proposed antenna have been carried out
using CST Microwave Studio. After designing the antenna for
free space, its performance was assessed in the near-body
environment and also under bending conditions in close
proximity to the human arm model. The simplified elliptical
human arm model with four tissue layers (Fig. 1(b)) was used
in simulation. The average thicknesses of skin (2 mm), fat (4
mm), muscle (min. 10 mm, max. 35 mm) and bone (35 mm)
tissues were included while modeling a human arm model [2].
The properties of the four tissues are given in Table I [6].
318 AP-S 2014
 TABLE I. PROPERTIES OF THE FOUR-LAYER HUMAN ARM TISSUE
MODEL AT 2.45GHZ
Tissues İr ı (S/m) tan į
Skin 38 1.46 0.283
Fat 5.28 0.105 0.145
Muscle 52.73 1.739 0.242
Bone 11.38 0.394 0.254
A. Return Loss
Fig. 2 shows the computed reflection coefficients of the
proposed antenna in free space and near-body scenarios. In free
space, this Antenna I provides a 10dB return loss bandwidth of
50 MHz (2.43-2.48 GHz). Usually, detuning occurs when an
antenna is placed closed to a human arm. This detuning is
reduced in the proposed design by using a full ground plane but
due to the small size of the ground plane slight detuning is
noted. Simulations have been carried out to investigate antenna
performance under conformal bending conditions near the
human arm model. When Antenna I is bent over human arm
leaving a gap of 2mm between them, and the corresponding
return loss is illustrated in Fig. 2. Some shifting of the
resonance frequency is observed due to this bending over
human arm. To achieve good impedance matching at 2.45 GHz
under bending around the human arm, antenna parameters were
retuned (stub length changed to 23 mm and antenna arms’
length to 47.5 mm). The retuned Antenna II provides a 10dB
return loss bandwidth of 30 MHz (2.44-2.47 GHz) with a peak
return loss of about 34dB at 2.45 GHz as shown in Fig. 2. The
change of resonance frequency due to practical variations in the
conformal gap (d) between the arm and Antenna II is very
small (0.85% at d=5 mm).
Fig. 2. |S11| of the proposed antenna in free space and near human arm
scenarios. d is the conformal gap between the arm and bent antenna.
B. Antenna Radiation Characteristics Near Human Body
Fig. 3 presents the computed radiation patterns of the
proposed antenna at 2.45 GHz for free space and near-body
scenarios. They show that near the body the antenna beam
becomes wider especially in the plane tangential to the body
(xy-plane) and the nulls along the x-axis are partially filled to
provide a better coverage.
319
(a)
(b) (c)
Fig. 3. Simulated radiation patterns (gain) of proposed antenna in
(a) xy-plane (b) xz-plane (c) yz-plane.
IV. CONCLUSION
A wearable printed antenna, which has a wide beam under
conformal bending around a human arm, is proposed to provide
better coverage along the body surface. Antenna performance
under different bending scenarios has been investigated. Due to
the full ground plane, this antenna performance is very
insensitive to the conformal separation between the antenna
and the human arm. For example, an increase of this gap from
2mm to 5mm changes the antenna resonance frequency only by
0.85% and its effect on the radiation pattern is not noticeable.
Small width of the antenna makes it a suitable candidate for on-
body wearable devices.
REFERENCES
[1] P. S. Hall and Y. Hao, Antennas and propagation for body-centric
wireless communications: Artech House, 2006.
[2] M. Koohestani, N. Pires, A. K. Skrivervik, and A. A. Moreira,
"Performance Study of a UWB Antenna in Proximity to a Human
Arm," IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, vol. 12, pp.
555-558, 2013.
[3] A. Brizzi, A. Pellegrini, and Y. Hao, "Design of a cylindrical resonant
cavity antenna for BAN applications at V band," in IEEE International
Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT), 2012, pp. 152-155.
[4] Syed Muzahir Abbas, Yogesh Ranga, and Karu P. Esselle, "A Printed
Antenna with a Ground Plane and Electromagnetically Coupled Feed
for 2.45GHz Body Area Networks," in IEEE AP-S/USNC-URSI
Symposium, Orlando, Florida, USA, July 7- 13, 2013.
[5] Syed Muzahir Abbas, Yogesh Ranga, and K. P. Esselle, "Stub-Loaded
Printed Antenna with a Ground Plane and Electromagnetically Coupled
Feed for 2.45GHz Body Area Networks," in IEEE MTT-S International
Microwave Workshop Series on RF and Wireless Technologies for
Biomedical and Healthcare Applications (IMWS-Bio 2013), Singapore,
December 9-11, 2013.
[6] Dielectric properties of body tissues. Available:
http://niremf.ifac.cnr.it/tissprop/