918 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO.

4, AUGUST 2020

A Novel Design Approach for Compact Wearable

Antennas Based on Metasurfaces
Kai Zhang , Guy A. E. Vandenbosch , Fellow, IEEE, and Sen Yan , Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper presents a novel approach to design com-

pact wearable antennas based on metasurfaces. The behavior
of compact metasurfaces is modeled with a composite right-left
handed transmission line (CRLH TL). By controlling the dispersion
curve, the resonant modes of the compact metasurface can be
tuned efficiently. A printed coplanar waveguide (CPW) monopole
antenna is used as the feed structure to excite the compact metasur-
face, which will result in a low profile antenna with low backward
radiation. Following this approach, two compact antennas are
designed for wearable applications. The first antenna is designed
to operate at its first negative mode (−1 mode), which can real-
ize miniaturization, but maintain the broadside radiation as for
a normal microstrip antenna. The proposed prototype resonates
around 2.65 GHz, with a matching bandwidth of 300 MHz. The
total dimensions of the antenna are 39.4 × 33.4 mm2 (0.1 λ0 2 ),
and its maximum gain is 2.99 dBi. The second antenna targets Fig. 1. A WBAN and its applications.
dual-band operation at 2.45 and 3.65 GHz. A pair of symmetric
modes (±1 modes) are used to generate similar radiation patterns
in these two bands. The size of the antenna is 55.79 × 52.25
mm2 (0.2 λ0 2 ), and the maximum gains are 4.25 and 7.35 dBi in
the two bands, respectively. Furthermore, the performance of the Fig. 1 shows a WBAN and its applications. In such biomedi-
antennas is analyzed on the human body. The results show that cal monitoring systems, wearable antennas play a crucial role,
the proposed antennas are promising candidates for Wireless Body collecting the data from the external/implantable sensors or
Area Networks (WBAN). sending the information to a data acquisition unit for on or
Index Terms—Composite right/left-handed transmission line off-body channel communication (BCC) [6]. As a key compo-
(CRLH TL), dual-band antenna, metasurface, miniaturized nent wearable antennas have received extensive attention and
antenna, wearable antennas, wireless body area networks (WBAN). have been rapidly developed in the last decade [7]–[13]. The
design approach and the performance requirements for wearable
I. INTRODUCTION antennas, taking into account the coupling with the human body
and the radiator’s flexibility, while simultaneously aiming at a
IRELESS Body Area Networks (WBAN) have been
W widely applied in various aspects of modern society,
e.g. personal medical monitoring, children and elder caring, res-
low profile, wide bandwidth, high efficiency and low specific
absorption rate (SAR), are significantly different from the ones
for conventional antennas [14]–[20].
cuing, battlefield supporting, explorations, games, etc. [1]–[5]. Recently, the research hotspot has been shifting towards wear-
able antenna designs based on metamaterials. A metamaterial
Manuscript received February 20, 2020; revised April 29, 2020 and June 11, is an artificially structured material that exhibits extraordinary
2020; accepted July 11, 2020. Date of publication July 20, 2020; date of current
version August 17, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National Natural electromagnetic properties not available or not easily obtainable
Science Foundation, China under Grant 61901351, and in part by the Technology in nature. The unique properties of a metamaterial endow more
Program of Shenzhen under Grant JCYJ20180306170841629. This article was flexibility and freedom for antenna engineers, which can im-
recommended by Associate Editor B. Gosselin. (Corresponding author: Sen
Yan.) prove the performances and enrich the functions of antennas.
Kai Zhang is with the School of Information and Communications Typically, two types of metamaterials have been considered in
Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China (e-mail: the design of wearable antennas, i.e. composite right/left-handed
kaizhangchn@hotmail.com).
Guy A. E. Vandenbosch is with the ESAT-TELEMIC Research Division, transmission lines (CRLH TL) and metasurfaces.
Department of Electrical Engineering, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium A CRLH TL model can be used as an engineered imple-
(e-mail: guy.vandenbosch@esat.kuleuven.be). mentation method for a metamaterial, by actually synthesizing
Sen Yan is with the School of Information and Communications Engineering,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China, and also with the Shenzhen the material properties in the transmission line model. The
Research School, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Shenzhen 518057, China (e-mail: advantage of CRLH TLs is that they are easy to fabricate with
sen.yan@xjtu.edu.cn). standard printed circuit board (PCB) technologies. This kind of
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available online
at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org. antennas are easily designed to work in different modes, such
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBCAS.2020.3010259 as the zeroth-order resonance (ZOR) mode, +1, and -1 modes
1932-4545 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
ZHANG et al.: NOVEL DESIGN APPROACH FOR COMPACT WEARABLE ANTENNAS BASED ON METASURFACES
[21]–[30], by adjusting the loading components. Although the
operating bands of CRLH TL inspired antennas can be designed
flexibly, the inherent narrow bandwidth limits the range of
applications of this type of antennas.
To overcome the narrowband characteristics of microstrip
antennas, another type of planar metamaterials, i.e. metasurfaces
has been introduced. A dipole/monopole can easily realize a
wide bandwidth, and AMC planes can provide an in-phase
mirror current, which will result in a low profile wideband
antenna with full isolation between the human body and the
radiators [17]–[20], [31]–[35]. This concept has been used to
design single band, dual-band, and wideband wearable antennas,
with rigid, semi-flexible, and flexible materials.
The normal design approach to design a metasurface is to
treat it as a reflector. If the reflective phase equals 0°, the
plane can be recognized as an AMC plane. Certainly, other
reflective phases can also be used in antenna design, when using
reactive planes for impedance matching. However, the correct
reflection coefficient can only be established when the size of
the metasurface is much larger than the operating wavelength.
From a computational point of view, it is still a challenge to
accurately model the influence of the size of a finite reflector.
On the other hand, several scholars recently found that for a
finite metasurface integrated antenna, the metasurface will play
a role as the main radiator, not only as a reflector like in the
infinite situation. Thus, the resonant frequencies of the whole
antenna mainly depend on the electrical size of the metasur-
face, while the top monopole functions as a feeding structure
[36]. The resonant frequencies of a finite metasurface can be
obtained by analyzing the dispersion characteristics of the unit
cell with periodic boundaries. This approach is quite similar
to the design of a CRLH TL inspired antenna. However, the
difference between these two structures is that metasurface based
antennas are normally fed by a monopole or dipole, which can
assist to improve the radiation characteristics and thus to obtain
a wider bandwidth, while CRLH TL inspired antennas are fed
by a microstrip line or a coaxial cable. With this method, a multi-
frequency antenna, with two patches like modes corresponding
to the ±1 modes, and a monopolar ZOR mode, was designed
in [37]. However, this antenna shows only narrow bandwidths.
This was mitigated by using the mushroom structure to design
wideband metamaterial-based antennas combining two differ-
ent resonances, for linear polarization [38]–[41] and circular
polarization [42], [43], respectively. A complementary split ring
resonator (CSRR) is introduced into the metasurface to decrease
the size in [44], [45].
In this paper, finite metasurfaces are operated at negative
modes, which resonate at much lower frequencies than positive
modes. This offers the possibility of miniaturization, for example
by using finite 2D CRLH TLs. Following this new conceptual
idea, two metasurface based wearable antennas have been real-
ized: a compact antenna and a dual-band antenna. A 3×3 array
metasurface is used as a radiator excited by a monopole feeding.
The miniaturization of the antenna is realized by employing its
negative mode. Besides, another dual-band antenna is achieved
by exciting its negative and positive modes simultaneously. Due
to the fact that symmetric modes are used, the two bands show
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
919
similar radiation properties, i.e., a broadside radiation pattern,
which is desired for on-body communications. In this paper,
we will fully explain the new design approach, and the antennas
will be fully simulated, prototyped, and measured. Besides, near
field distributions are given to prove the modus operandi of the
antennas. Furthermore, on-body performance is also included.
As far as the authors can see, it is the first time in literature that
a metasurface antenna is modeled as a 2D CRLH TL operating
at its negative mode.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the design of
the compact antenna operated at the -1 mode will be described to
explain the proposed design approach. In Section III, a dual-band
antenna working at ±1 modes will be studied, even deepening
this explanation. Section IV will discuss the performance of
the two proposed antennas on the human body. A comparison
between the proposed antennas and other designs in literature
will be listed before the short conclusion.
II. DESIGN OF A MINIATURE ANTENNA
This section explains the design approach and the operational
mechanism of the miniature antenna in full details.
A. Antenna Configuration
As shown in Fig. 2(a), the proposed antenna is composed
of two parts, i.e. the metasurface and the exciting structure,
which are located on the lower and upper substrates, respectively.
The mushroom metasurface is printed on the lower substrate
with a thickness of 3 mm. The dielectric constant and loss
tangent are 2.65 and 0.0027, respectively. An array of 3 × 3
mushroom structures is used in this design. The metal ground
covers the whole bottom surface of the lower substrate for
isolation between the radiator and the human body, and also
for improving the antenna performance. The exciting structure
is a CPW fed monopole, which is located on the top surface of
the upper substrate with a thickness of 1.5 mm. The dielectric
constant and loss tangent are the same as for the lower substrate.
This single layered configuration allows the two substrates to
be installed without any air gap, and thus a low profile structure
is obtained. The total footprint of the antenna is 0.1 λ2 , which
is much more compact than most antennas in the literature (see
Table III).
B. Metasurface Design
As mentioned already, when the size of the metasurface is of
the same order as the operating wavelength, it can be modeled as
a 2D CRLH TL, which will support negative resonant modes. In
general, the resonant condition of the metasurface is governed
by
Nx(y) × Px(y) = n(m)π, n(m) = 0, ± 1, ± 2, · ·· (1)
where Nx(y) is the number of unit cells along the x or y direction,
Px(y) is the phase delay of each unit cell along the different di-
rections, and n(m) is the resonant mode number, representing the
number of standing wave oscillations in the x and y-directions.
To miniaturize the antenna, a negative mode is chosen in this
920 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 4, AUGUST 2020

Fig. 3. (a) Simulation model of dispersion of unit cell. (b) Equivalent circuit
of meta-surface unit cell. The values of the lumped elements for an equivalent
circuit unit cell are CL = 2.34 pF, CR = 5.2 pF, LL = 0.3 nH, and LR = 1
nH. (c) Dispersion curve simulated by CST and calculated by equivalent circuit
while Py = 0°.

modeled as a parallel inductor LL . The CSRR is used to enhance

the parallel inductor further [46]. The equivalent circuit is shown
in Fig. 3(b), where LR and CR are the inherent characteristics of
the unit cell. For the proposed antenna, we consider Nx = Ny =
3. If the antenna resonates at its first mode, i.e., n = ±1, the phase
delay of each unit cell should be Px = 60◦ and Py = 0◦ . The
series impedance Z and parallel admittance Y are given by
   
1 1
Z = j ωLR − , Y = j ωCR − (2)
ωCL ωLL
Fig. 2. Geometry of the proposed wearable antenna. (a) 3D structure. (b) Di-
mensions of antenna with top view and side view. (c) Dimensions of metasurface Then, the periodic boundary conditions and the Bloch-Floquet
unit cell. theorem are applied to the equivalent unit circuit [47],
 
1 ZY
TABLE I β(ω) = cos−1 1 + (3)
DIMENSIONS OF THE ANTENNA 1 IN FIG. 2 p 2
resulting in
⎛    ⎞
1 1
1 −1 ⎝ − ωLR − ωCL · ωCR − ωLL
β(ω) = cos 1+ ⎠
p 2
(4)
where p is the length of the unit cell. In the calculation, the
unit cell is excited by a microstrip line as shown in Fig. 3(b),
which supports a quasi TEM mode, and corresponds to Py = 0◦ .
The dispersion curve of the unit cell in the x-direction can be
calculated based on the S-parameters [47],
design, which is significantly different from previous studies  
1 − S11 S22 + S12 S21
[17]–[22], [31]–[35]. βp = cos−1 (5)
The unit cells of the proposed metasurface consist of a CSRR, 2S21
several interdigital metal strips, and a via. The interdigital metal The unit cell of the metasurface, as shown in Fig. 3(a), is
strip can be regarded as a serial capacitor CL , while the via is simulated, and the dispersion curve calculated with (5), is shown

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
ZHANG et al.: NOVEL DESIGN APPROACH FOR COMPACT WEARABLE ANTENNAS BASED ON METASURFACES 921

Fig. 4. S11 of Antenna in Fig. 1, where w/ MS stands for monopole with

metasurface plane and w/o MS stands for monopole without metasurface plane.

Fig. 6. (a) Amplitude of E-field along the z direction at 2.65 GHz and
(b) E-field of antenna 1 in xoz plane and yoz plane.

Fig. 5. Far field realized gain pattern at 2.65 GHz. (a) xoz plane. (b) yoz plane.
Sim. Eθ, Sim. Eϕ, Mea. Eθ, Mea. Eϕ. The simulated Eϕ is below
−40 dBi in xoz plane in (a).

in Fig. 3(c). The resonant frequency of the unit cell is 2.65 GHz
with a phase delay of Px = 60◦ , which corresponds to the first
negative resonant mode. The short dashed line was calculated
by (4) and the lumped elements in the equivalent circuit (see
the caption of Fig. 3) were determined through curve fitting.
The dispersion curve calculated with the lumped element model
agrees well with the dispersion curve calculated with CST. The
occurrence of the two pulses in the CST result is due to the
self-resonance of the unit cell.

C. Feeding Monopole
The size of the CPW monopole antenna is 35.27 × 14.30
× 1.50 mm3 . By tuning the radius of the circular radiating
patch, the coupling between the monopole and the metasurface
can be adjusted. This will be used to optimize the impedance
matching of the whole antenna system [43]. The S11 of the
feeding monopole is shown in Fig. 4.
D. Antenna Performance
The monopole and the metasurface are stacked and co-
optimized in CST MWS for impedance matching. The final
dimensions of the optimized antenna are shown in Table I. A
prototype of the metasurface based antenna is fabricated, see
the insert illustration in Fig. 4. An Agilent AV3672E-S vector
network analyzer (VNA) is used for measurement. Fig. 3 shows
the S11 simulated and measured results. When integrating the
Fig. 7. (a) Model of dual-band compact antenna 2 and (b) model of meta-
surface unit cell of antenna 2 and its dispersion curve. The values of the
lumped elements for the equivalent circuit unit cell are CL = 0.802 pF, CR =
6.67 pF, LL = 0.5 nH, and LR = 3 nH.
finite metasurface, the matching frequency bandwidth increases
a little. The simulated matching bandwidth (S11 < −10 dB)
is from 2.47 to 2.77 GHz, while the measured one is from
2.55 GHz to 2.76 GHz. The little frequency shift may be caused
by the uncertain properties of the substrate. An 11.5% matching
bandwidth is obtained for a dimension of 39.4 × 33.4 mm2 .
It should be emphasized that the performance of the antenna

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
922 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 4, AUGUST 2020
TABLE II
DIMENSIONS OF THE ANTENNA 2 IN FIG. 7(a)
Fig. 8. S11 of antenna in Fig. 7. where w/ MS stands for monopole with
metasurface plane and w/o MS stands for monopole without metasurface plane.
is stable for small deviations of the location of the feeding
monopole with respect to the metasurface. The radiation patterns
were measured in an anechoic chamber and are shown in Fig. 5.
In general, a reasonable agreement is achieved between the
simulation and the measurement. The antenna shows a broadside
pattern. At the center frequency, the gains in simulation and
measurement are 2.99 dBi and 2.1 dBi, respectively, and the
simulated radiation efficiency is 87%. Due to the small size of
the ground compared to the wavelength, the antenna shows a
relatively low FBR, i.e. 2.1 dB. The little distinction between
the simulated and measured results could be due to the offset
between the metasurface and the monopole structure, and the
feeding cables used in the measurement, which are not included
in our simulation model.
E. Working Mechanism
To further understand the operating mode of the antenna, the
E-field distribution is illustrated. Fig. 6(a) shows the distribution
of the z-directed component of the electric field at 2.65 GHz in
the z = 1.5 mm plane. In addition, the vectorial view of the
electric field is presented in Fig. 6(b), where the xoz plane is
located at y = 0 mm and the yoz plane is located at x = 20 mm.
It can be obviously seen that this E-field distribution presents a
half wavelength variation in the xoz plane and the zeroth mode
is appearing in the yoz plane. From the distribution diagram,
it can be clearly seen that the E-field of a TM(−10) mode is
excited. Furthermore, another similar mode, i.e. the TM(+10)
mode can be excited at the higher frequency, which is used in a
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 9. Far field realized gain pattern in (a) xoz plane at 2.57 GHz. (b) yoz
plane at 2.57 GHz. (c) xoz plane at 3.65 GHz. (d) YOZ plane at 3.65 GHz.
Sim. Eθ, Sim. Eϕ, Mea. Eθ, Mea. Eϕ.
normal design. Since the negative mode is adopted, the relative
size of the antenna is much smaller than in previous designs in
literature, see Table V in the last section.
III. DUAL-BAND ANTENNA DESIGN
In this section, the design of a dual-band antenna is presented
following the same design approach as in the last section. As
we mentioned before, a positive mode and a negative mode can
compose a pair of asymmetric modes modeled with the CRLH
TL model. For a finite metasurface, the same analysis method
can be used. We will indeed show that a finite metasurface can
generate a pair of symmetric modes, i.e. with similar near field
distributions and far-field patterns, resulting in a much wider
antenna bandwidth compared to traditional CRLH TL based
antennas.
A. Antenna Configuration and Metasurface Design
As shown in Fig. 7(a), the antenna has the same configuration
as the design in the last section. The substrates of both the feeding
antenna and the metasurface adopt a dielectric substrate with
permittivity 2.65 and loss tangent 0.0027. A monopole is still
employed as the feeding antenna. Certainly, the dimensions of
the monopole should be re-optimized to obtain matching in both
bands. The S11 of the monopole is included in Fig. 8.
Since we want to design a dual-band antenna with broadside
pattern, TM(±10) modes are chosen for the lower and upper
bands. As the mode number in the y-direction is always 0,
only a 1D dispersion curve is needed, as in the last design.
The simulation model and the numerical results are shown in
Fig. 6. The resonant frequencies are 2.45 GHz and 3.65 GHz
for the −1 mode and +1 mode, respectively. Certainly, these
resonances can be easily tuned by changing the equivalent circuit
and redesigning the dimensions of the unit cell. The values of
the lumped elements of the equivalent circuit are listed in the
caption of Fig. 7(b). The two curves agree well.
ZHANG et al.: NOVEL DESIGN APPROACH FOR COMPACT WEARABLE ANTENNAS BASED ON METASURFACES 923

Fig. 11. The model of the human tissue.

Fig. 12. Antenna measurement. (a) Schematic diagram of antenna connection.

(b) Structure placed on human body.

Fig. 10. (a) Amplitude of E-field along the z direction at 2.57 GHz. (b) E-field
of antenna 2 in xoz plane and yoz plane at 2.57 GHz. (c) Amplitude of E-field
along the z direction at 3.65 GHz. (d) E-field of antenna 2 in xoz plane and yoz
plane at 3.65 GHz.

The optimized parameters of the proposed dual-band antenna

are displayed in Table II. A prototype was fabricated with a
55.79 × 52.25 mm2 footprint.

B. Antenna Performance
Fig. 8 shows the simulated and measured S11 results. The sim-
ulated lower frequency band ranges from 2.28 to 2.67 GHz with
387 MHz bandwidth, and the simulated upper-frequency band
ranges from 3.65 to 3.74 GHz with 83 MHz bandwidth. These
results agree well with our previous prediction based on the
dispersion diagram in Fig. 7(b). The measurements agree well
with the simulations. It should be mentioned that the monopole
only shows a single band around 2.2 GHz, which also proves that
the dual-band behavior is caused by the metasurface. Another
interesting point is that another resonance of the metasurface
Fig. 13. Simulation and measurement results on human body of (a) antenna
1 and (b) antenna 2, where w/ MS indicates antenna with metasurface and w/o
MS indicates antenna without metasurface.
is observed near the TM(−10) mode. By analyzing the field
distribution, it can be confirmed that this is the TM(−12) mode of
the metasurface, which actually has a similar radiation pattern as
the TM(−10) mode. By combining the TM(−10) and TM(−12)
modes, the lower band is noticeably extended compared to the

Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
924 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 4, AUGUST 2020
Fig. 14. Sensitivity to the size of the gap between the antenna and the body
of S11 for antenna 1.
Fig. 15. Simulated far field realized gain pattern on human body for (a) antenna
1 at 2.65 GHz in xoz plane. (b) Antenna 1 at 2.65 GHz in yoz plane. (c) Antenna
2 at 2.57 GHz in xoz plane. (d) Antenna 2 at 2.57 GHz in yoz plane. (e) Antenna
2 at 3.65 GHz in xoz plane. (f) Antenna 2 at 3.65 GHz in yoz plane. Sim. Eθ,
Sim. Eϕ. The simulated values of Eϕ are smaller than −30 dBi in (a) and (b).
Fig. 16. Comparison of simulated (a) radiation efficiency and (b) gain for free
space and on body cases.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 17. Simulated SAR with 5 mm gap between the antenna and the body.
(a) Monopole without metasurface at 2.65 GHz. (b) Monopole with metasurface
at 2.65 GHz (antenna 1). (c) Antenna 2 at 2.57 GHz. (d) Antenna 2 at 3.65 GHz.
previous design. Furthermore, the TM(−22) mode can be found
at the lower frequencies, but it has a different radiation pattern.
Fig. 9 shows the radiation patterns of the proposed antenna.
The broadside patterns are achieved in both the lower and upper
bands. The radiation efficiency and the gain of the antenna are
included in Table IV. Due to the relatively larger size, the results
in the upper band show a narrower beamwidth, a higher FBR,
and also a higher gain compared to the lower band.
C. Working Mechanism
The electric field distributions of the proposed antenna at the
lower and upper resonant frequencies are shown in Fig. 10. The
cutting planes are located at the same position as in Fig. 6.
Obviously, similar field distributions are shown, i.e. only one
standing wave oscillation appears in the x-direction and the
electric fields keep the same phase along the y-direction. These
near field distributions guarantee the unique far-field patterns in
lower and upper bands.
IV. ANTENNAS ON HUMAN BODY
In this section, the performances of the two proposed anten-
nas are evaluated on the human body. Both S-parameters and
radiation patterns are analyzed, together with SAR values. The
scenario of the numerical model is shown in Fig. 11. The cubic
tissue model consists of a 2 mm-thick skin layer, a 5 mm-thick
fat layer, a 20 mm-thick muscle layer, and a 13 mm-thick bone
layer with 150 ×150 mm2 size. This is a widely used model to
analyze wearable antennas [48]. All the material parameters of
the tissues are obtained from the values available in the CST
Studio human tissue library. A 5 mm air gap is set between the
antenna and the surface of the skin to mimic any worn clothes.
This is a good model, since in reality there indeed does exist
ZHANG et al.: NOVEL DESIGN APPROACH FOR COMPACT WEARABLE ANTENNAS BASED ON METASURFACES
TABLE III
COMPARISON WITH LITERATURE
a real air gap between the wearable device and the skin, while
the permittivity of most textiles is pretty low, resembling air.
An Agilent AV3672E-S VNA was used in the measurements.
An SMA connector connected the cable of the VNA with the
antenna. As shown in Fig. 12. S-parameters were measured on
the chest of a volunteer. The thickness of the clothes was about
5 mm. A comparison of the results is given in Table IV.
A. S-Parameters Evaluation
In Fig. 13, the S11 curves of the two proposed antennas are
presented. Because of the presence of the ground under the
antennas, the resonant frequencies do not show any significant
shifting. The matching bandwidths are slightly influenced by the
human body.
In Fig. 14, the effect of the size of the gap between the antenna
and the body on S11 is studied for antenna 1. The frequency band
increases with the increase of the gap size, which indicates that
the performance of the antenna worsens when the antenna comes
too close to the skin.
B. Radiation Performance Evaluation
The radiation patterns of the two antennas are shown in
Fig. 15. In general, due to the relatively small dimension of
the ground, the backward radiation is higher but absorbed by the
human body, which will reduce the FBR in the patterns. Because
of this absorption, also the efficiency of the antennas drops.
For antenna 1, in Fig. 16(a), the simulated radiation efficiency
decreases from 87% to 31%. For antenna 2, the efficiency
decreases from 97% to 53% and from 88% to 70% in the two
bands, respectively. The minor decline for antenna 2, especially
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
925
for the upper band is mainly due to the relatively large size of the
ground, which reduces the coupling between the human body
and the antenna. Although the on-body efficiency of antenna
1 decreases compared to the results in free space, it is still at
the same level of other wearable antennas [12], [18], [49], [50],
and this efficiency can be further improved by inserting a large
flexible thin metallic textile layer between the antenna and the
human body [51]. Another interesting point is that the gain of
antenna 2 on the body is higher than in free space in the high
frequency band in Fig. 16(b). The reason is that the human body
partly reflects the energy radiated by the antenna. The combined
effect of reflection and absorption can increase the gain at some
frequencies [52], [53].
The directivity actually improves when integrating with the
human body. However, considering the reduction of the radiation
efficiency, the realized gain of the antennas may reduce, mainly
in the lower band. In the upper band of the second antenna,
the gain improves a little, thanks to the combination of higher
directivity and relatively higher efficiency.
C. SAR Evaluation
For wearable applications, the SAR value is a critical param-
eter. The numerical SAR distributions of the proposed antennas
are shown in Fig. 17. The calculation is based on the IEEE C95.3
standards, and the simulated power is 200 mW. According to
the European standard, the SAR results should be under 2 W/kg
averaged over 10 g tissue. For the first antenna, the peak SAR
value of the proposed feeding monopole without metasurface
is 4.5 W/kg, while the value for the antenna with metasurface
is only 1.25 W/kg for 5 mm gap, meeting the standard. For
926 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, VOL. 14, NO. 4, AUGUST 2020
TABLE IV
MAIN PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS OF ANTENNAS
the second antenna, the peak SAR values are 0.651 W/kg and
0.369 W/kg at 2.57 GHz and 3.65 GHz, respectively.
A summary of the proposed antenna performances under
different conditions is presented in Table IV. A comparison
between the proposed antennas and other designs in literature
is given in Table III. Compared with the antennas in [36], [43],
[50], which have a similar size, the antenna in this paper has a
wider operation band. Compared with other works in Table III,
our designs have a more compact size and a more competitive
performance.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel approach for compact wearable an-
tenna design based on finite metasurfaces was proposed. The
dispersion diagram was used to analyze the behavior of the finite
metasurfaces, in this way predicting the resonances of the meta-
surfaces. Two compact wearable antennas were designed for
single band and dual-band operation, using feeding by a simple
CPW monopole. The operating mechanism, design procedure,
simulated and measured performances of these two antennas
were discussed in detail in the paper. The first antenna achieves
a quite compact size, with a footprint of only 0.1 λ2 . The second
antenna is based on a pair of symmetric modes, which results
in a similar radiation pattern in the two bands. The proposed
antennas work in the ISM band. They can for example be used in
smart bracelets/watches or be integrated into clothes to monitor
the vital-sign data in biomedical monitoring systems. Note that
with the proposed method, the antennas can be designed in
any required frequency bands, with a more compact size and
a competitive performance, both in free space and on the human
body. This makes them very suitable candidates for WBAN
applications.
REFERENCES
[1] D. Patron et al., “On the use of knitted antennas and inductively coupled
RFID tags for wearable applications,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst.,
vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 1047–1057, Dec. 2016.
[2] A. S. M. Alqadami, K. S. Bialkowski, A. T. Mobashsher, and A. M.
Abbosh, “Wearable electromagnetic head imaging system using flexible
wideband antenna array based on polymer technology for brain stroke
diagnosis,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 124–134,
Feb. 2019.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
[3] X. Y. Zhang, H. Wong, T. Mo, and Y. F. Cao, “Dual-band dual-mode button
antenna for on-body and off-body communications,” IEEE Trans. Biomed.
Circuits Syst., vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 933–941, Aug. 2017.
[4] H. Wong, W. Lin, L. Huitema, and E. Arnaud, “Multi-polarization recon-
figurable antenna for wireless biomedical system,” IEEE Trans. Biomed.
Circuits Syst., vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 652–660, Jun. 2017.
[5] F. Kong, M. Zada, H. Yoo, and M. Ghovanloo, “Adaptive matching trans-
mitter with dual-band antenna for intraoral tongue drive system,” IEEE
Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 1279–1288, Dec. 2018.
[6] B. Zhao, J. Mao, J. Zhao, H. Yang, and Y. Lian, “The role and challenges
of body channel communication in wearable flexible electronics,” IEEE
Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 283–296, Apr. 2020.
[7] Z. H. Jiang, M. D. Gregory, and D. H. Werner, “Design and experimental
investigation of a compact circularly polarized integrated filtering antenna
for wearable biotelemetric devices,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst.,
vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 328–338, Apr. 2016.
[8] S. Yan and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Design of wideband button antenna
based on characteristic mode theory,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst.,
vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 1383–1391, Dec. 2018.
[9] A. S. M. Alqadami, K. S. Bialkowski, A. T. Mobashsher, and A. M.
Abbosh, “Wearable electromagnetic head imaging system using flexible
wideband antenna array based on polymer technology for brain stroke
diagnosis,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 124–134,
Feb. 2019.
[10] J. Zhang, S. Yan, X. Hu, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Dual-band dual-
polarized wearable button array with miniaturized radiator,” IEEE Trans.
Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 1583–1592, Dec. 2019.
[11] J. Kim, A. S. Campbell, B. E. de Avila, and J. Wang, “Wearable biosensors
for healthcare monitoring,” Nature Biotechnol., vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 389–406,
Apr. 2019.
[12] S. M. Saeed, C. A. Balanis, C. R. Birtcher, A. C. Durgun, and H. N.
Shaman, “Wearable flexible reconfigurable antenna integrated with artifi-
cial magnetic conductor,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 16,
pp. 2396–2399, 2017.
[13] S. Yan, P. J. Soh, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Wearable ultrawideband
technology—A review of ultrawideband antennas, propagation channels,
and applications in wireless body area networks,” IEEE Access, vol. 6,
pp. 42177–42185, 2018.
[14] M. Bariya, H. Y. Y. Nyein, and A. Javey, “Wearable sweat sensors,” Nature
Elect., vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 160–171, 2018.
[15] S. Yan, V. Volskiy, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Compact dual-band textile
PIFA for 433-MHz/2.4-GHz ISM bands,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag.
Lett., vol. 16, pp. 2436–2439, 2017.
[16] J. Trajkovikj and A. K. Skrivervik, “Diminishing SAR for wearable UHF
antennas,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 14, pp. 1530–1533,
2015.
[17] M. El Atrash, M. A. Abdalla, and H. M. Elhennawy, “A wearable dual-band
low profile high gain low SAR antenna AMC-backed for WBAN appli-
cations,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 67, no. 10, pp. 6378–6388,
Oct. 2019.
[18] S. Yan, P. J. Soh, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Low-profile dual-band textile
antenna with artificial magnetic conductor plane,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 62, no. 12, pp. 6487–6490, Dec. 2014.
[19] F. H. Lin and Z. N. Chen, “A method of suppressing higher order modes for
improving radiation performance of metasurface multiport antennas using
characteristic mode analysis,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 66, no.
4, pp. 1894–1902, Apr. 2018.
[20] S. Zhu and R. Langley, “Dual-band wearable textile antenna on an EBG
substrate,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 926–935,
Apr. 2009.
[21] T. J. Jung, J. H. Kwon, and S. Lim, “Flexible zeroth-order resonant
antenna independent of substrate deformation,” Elect. Lett., vol. 46, no.
11, pp. 740–742, May 2010.
[22] S. Yan and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Low-profile dual-band pattern diversity
patch antenna based on composite right/left-handed transmission line,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 65, no. 6, pp. 2808–2815, Jun. 2017.
[23] S. Yan, P. J. Soh, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Compact all-textile dual-band
antenna loaded with metamaterial-inspired structure,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 14, pp. 1486–1489, 2015.
[24] S. Yan and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Radiation pattern-reconfigurable wear-
able antenna based on metamaterial structure,” IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag. Lett., vol. 15, pp. 1715–1718, 2016.
[25] J. Zhang, S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Realization of dual-band
pattern diversity with a CRLH-TL-inspired reconfigurable metamaterial,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 66, no. 10, pp. 5130–5138, Oct. 2018.
ZHANG et al.: NOVEL DESIGN APPROACH FOR COMPACT WEARABLE ANTENNAS BASED ON METASURFACES
[26] H. Lee, D. Ren, and J. H. Choi, “Dual-band and polarization-flexible
CRLH substrate-integrated waveguide resonant antenna,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 17, no. 8, pp. 1469–1472, Aug. 2018.
[27] S. Yan, J. Bao, I. Ocket, B. Nauwelaers, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Meta-
material inspired miniaturized SIW resonator for sensor applications,”
Sensors and Actuators A: Physical, vol. 283, pp. 313–316, 2018.
[28] L. Li, Z. Jia, F. Huo, and W. Han, “A novel compact multiband antenna
employing dual-band CRLH-TL for smart mobile phone application,”
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 12, pp. 1688–1691, 2013.
[29] M. A. Abdalla, M. H. Ghouz, and M. Abo El-Dahab, “Loaded dipole
antennas with new CRLH cell configuration,” Int. J. Elect. Commun.,
vol. 80, pp. 165–171, 2017.
[30] K. Saurav, D. Sarkar, and K. V. Srivastava, “CRLH unit-cell loaded
multiband printed dipole antenna,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett.,
vol. 13, pp. 852–855, 2014.
[31] S. Kim, Y.-J. Ren, H. Lee, A. Rida, S. Nikolaou, and M. M. Tentzeris,
“Monopole antenna with inkjet-printed EBG array on paper substrate for
wearable applications,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 11,
pp. 663–666, 2012.
[32] H. R. Raad, A. I. Abbosh, H. M. Al-Rizzo, and D. G. Rucker, “Flexible
and compact AMC based antenna for telemedicine applications,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 524–531, Feb. 2013.
[33] M. A. B. Abbasi, S. S. Nikolaou, M. A. Antoniades, M. Nikolic Stevanovic,
and P. Vryonides, “Compact EBG-backed planar monopole for BAN
wearable applications,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 65, no. 2,
pp. 453–463, Feb. 2017.
[34] S. Velan et al., “Dual-band EBG integrated monopole antenna deploying
fractal geometry for wearable applications,” IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag. Lett., vol. 14, pp. 249–252, 2015.
[35] G. Gao, C. Yang, B. Hu, R. Zhang, and S. Wang, “A wearable PIFA with
an all-textile metasurface for 5 GHz WBAN applications,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 288–292, Feb. 2019.
[36] Z. H. Jiang, D. E. Brocker, P. E. Sieber, and D. H. Werner, “A com-
pact, low-profile metasurface-enabled antenna for wearable medical body-
area network devices,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 62, no. 8,
pp. 4021–4030, Aug. 2014.
[37] W. Cao, B. Zhang, A. Liu, T. Yu, D. Guo, and X. Pan, “Multi-frequency
and dual-mode patch antenna based on electromagnetic band-gap (EBG)
structure,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 60, no. 12, pp. 6007–6012,
Dec. 2012.
[38] W. E. I. Liu, Z. N. Chen, and X. Qing, “Broadband low-profile l-probe fed
metasurface antenna with TM leaky wave and te surface wave resonances,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 1348–1355, Mar. 2020.
[39] W. Liu, Z. N. Chen, and X. Qing, “Metamaterial-based low-profile broad-
band mushroom antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 62, no. 3,
pp. 1165–1172, Mar. 2014.
[40] N. Nie, X. Yang, Z. N. Chen and B. Wang, “A low-profile wideband
hybrid metasurface antenna array for 5G and WiFi systems,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 665–671, Feb. 2020.
[41] A. Suntives and R. Abhari, “Design of a compact miniaturized probe-fed
patch antenna using electromagnetic bandgap structures,” in Proc. IEEE
Antennas Propag. Soc. Int. Symp., 2010, pp. 1–4.
[42] Z. H. Jiang, Z. Cui, T. Yue, Y. Zhu, and D. H. Werner, “Compact, highly
efficient, and fully flexible circularly polarized antenna enabled by silver
nanowires for wireless body-area networks,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits
Syst., vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 920–932, Aug. 2017.
[43] T. Yue, Z. H. Jiang, and D. H. Werner, “Compact, wideband antennas
enabled by interdigitated capacitor-loaded metasurfaces,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 64, no. 5, pp. 1595–1606, May 2016.
[44] T. Yue, Z. H. Jiang, and D. H. Werner, “A compact metasurface-enabled
dual-band dual-sense circularly-polarized antenna loaded with comple-
mentary spit ring resonators,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 67,
no. 2, pp. 794–803, Feb. 2019.
[45] T. Yue, Z. H. Jiang, A. H. Panaretos, and D. H. Werner, “Ultra-
compact dual-band antenna enabled by complementary split ring resonator
loaded metasurface,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 65, no. 12,
pp. 6878–6888, Dec. 2017.
[46] X. Cheng, D. E. Senior, C. Kim, and Y.-K. Yoon, “A compact omni-
directional self-packaged patch antenna with complementary split-ring
resonator loading for wireless endoscope applications,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 1532–1535, 2011.
[47] C. Caloz and T. Itoh, Electromagnetic Metamaterials: Transmission
LineTheory and Microwave Applications. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley,
2005.
Authorized licensed use limited to: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Downloaded on November 16,2023 at 06:51:44 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
927
[48] Y. Chen and T. Ku, “A low-profile wearable antenna using a miniature high
impedance surface for smartwatch applications,” IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag. Lett., vol. 15, pp. 1144–1147, 2016.
[49] A. Alemaryeen and S. Noghanian, “Crumpling effects and specific absorp-
tion rates of flexible AMC integrated antennas,” IET Microw., Antennas
Propag., vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 627–635, 2018.
[50] K. Agarwal, Y. Guo, and B. Salam, “Wearable AMC backed near-endfire
antenna for on-body communications on latex substrate,” IEEE Trans.
Compon., Packag., Manuf. Technol., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 346–358, Mar. 2016.
[51] G. A. Casula, A. Michel, P. Nepa, G. Montisci, and G. Mazzarella,
“Robustness of wearable UHF-band PIFAs to human-body proximity,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 64, no. 5, pp. 2050–2055, May 2016.
[52] G. Melia, “Electromagnetic absorption by the human body from 1-15
GHz,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. Elect. Eng., Univ. of York, York, USA,
2013.
[53] J. W. Hand, “Modelling the interaction of electromagnetic fields (10 MHz–
10 GHz) with the human body: Methods and applications,” Phys. Med.
Biol., vol. 53, no. 16, pp. R243–R286, 2008.
Kai Zhang received the B.S. degree from Xi’an
Shiyou University, Xi’an, China, in 2015, and the
M.S. degree from Xidian University, Xi’an, in 2018.
He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in elec-
tronics science and technology, from Xi’an Jiaotong
University, Xi’an. His current research interests in-
clude metasurface and wearable antenna.
Guy A. E. Vandenbosch (Fellow, IEEE) re-
ceived the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium, in 1985 and 1991, respectively.
He has been a Lecturer and a Full Professor with
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, since 1993 and 2005,
respectively. From September 2014 to December
2014, he was a Visiting Professor with Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China. He teaches courses on
electromagnetic waves, antennas, propagation, and
electromagnetic compatibility. His research interests
are in the area of electromagnetic theory, computational electromagnetics,
planar antennas and circuits, nanoelectromagnetics, EM radiation, EMC, and
bioelectromagnetics. He has authored 330 articles in international journals and
has 390 presentations at international conferences. Dr. Vandenbosch was the
Vice-Chairman from 1999 to 2004, Secretary from 2005 to 2009, and Chairman
of the IEEE Benelux Chapter on Antennas and Propagation from 2010 to 2016.
He was the Secretary of the IEEE Benelux Chapter on EMC from 2002 to 2004.
He was the Secretary of the Belgian National Committee for Radio-Electricity
(URSI) from 2012 to 2014, where he is also in charge of the Commission
E. Since 2017, he has been a member of the IEEE Electromagnetics Award
Committee.
Sen Yan (Member IEEE) received his bachelor’s
and master’s degrees in information and communi-
cation engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University
(XJTU), Xi’an, China, in 2007 and 2010, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven),
Leuven, Belgium, in 2015. From 2015 to 2017, he
was a Postdoctoral Researcher with KU Leuven. In
2016, he joined EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, and
the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA,
as a Visiting Researcher. Since 2017, he has been a
Full Professor with XJTU. He has authored or co-authored 50 international
journal papers and 48 conference contributions. His current research interests
include metamaterials and metasurfaces, wearable devices and textile antennas,
reconfigurable antennas, antenna diversity, and biosensors. Dr. Yan received
the Post-Doctoral Fellowship from KU Leuven and FWO in 2015 and 2016,
respectively. In 2017, he received the “Young Talent Support Plan” from XJTU.
In 2019, he received the “Young Scientist Award” of the International Union of
Radio Science (URSI).