2324 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2020

Wearable Dual-Band and Dual-Polarized Textile

Antenna for On- and Off-Body Communications
Hongcai Yang , Student Member, IEEE, and Xiongying Liu , Member, IEEE

Abstract—A wearable all-textile microstrip patch antenna

(MPA) operating in the dual bands of medical body area net-
work (2.36–2.40 GHz) and WiMAX (3.4–3.6 GHz), is proposed
for body-centric communications. The omnidirectional radiation
pattern with linear polarization for on-body link and unidirectional
radiation pattern with circular polarization for off-body link are
achieved by introducing reactance loading into MPA. Notably, two
pairs of shorting pins are employed to tune the TM10 mode of
MPA and generate a new mode of TM00 , and by adjusting the
spacing and radii of shorting pins, the required dual-band and
dual-mode operation is achieved. Moreover, due to the adoption of
textile (i.e., wool felt) as substrate and nylon conductive fabric as Fig. 1. (a) Configuration of the proposed antenna. (b) Three-layer phantom in
conductor, the antenna is flexible, totally conforming to the human HFSS.
body. The proposed MPA, with the dimensions of 70 mm × 70 mm
× 2 mm (0.56λ0 × 0.56λ0 × 0.016λ0 at 2.38 GHz), was fabricated presented in [5] and [6]. A monopole antenna backed with an
and characterized. The measured results show that the reflection
artificial magnetic conductor is proposed in [7]. However, these
coefficient, radiation pattern, and gain of the antenna are slightly
affected by structural deformation and human body loading. With on-body antennas are based on single-mode radiation and only
merit characteristics, the proposed design can be well applied to suitable for on- or off-body communications. To address this
wearable medical applications. drawback, various antennas, such as stacked structure antennas
[8]–[10] and annular ring loaded with circular patch antennas
Index Terms—All-textile, body-centric communications, dual- [11], [12], have been implemented for on- and off-body com-
band and dual-mode operation, wearable antenna. munications simultaneously. However, the above-mentioned an-
tennas are made of rigid materials, which are difficult to conform
I. INTRODUCTION
to the human body. Therefore, flexible materials, including
HE wearable antennas working in multibands with polar-
T ization diversity can realize multifunctions such as on- and
off-body communications in a single device. Hence, they are
textiles [13]–[15], polydimethylsiloxane [16], and foam [17],
are introduced to achieve dual-mode operation. In [13] and [14],
dual-mode operation has been implemented in a single band, but
very welcome with the advantages of space saving and low cost dual-port feeding is needed. Two circular patch antennas using
in wireless body area network (WBAN) systems [1], [2]. TM11 and TM02 modes are presented in [15] and [16], but they
In WBAN, there are two types of wireless data transfer for are fed by a probe, making them inconvenient to wear.
the wearable antennas. One is on-body propagation link [3], In this letter, a dual-band and dual-polarized wearable mi-
which requires the antenna with an omnidirectional radiation crostrip patch antenna (MPA) with dual-radiation patterns is
pattern, as the path gain can be maximized and the unwanted designed for on- and off-body communications. The proposed
radiation can be suppressed. The other is off-body propagation antenna employs only one rectangular patch fed by a simple
utilizing the antenna with unidirectional radiation [4], through microstrip line. By loading shorting pins on the MPA instead of
which physiological data can be sent to external networks for integrating two radiators, the desired 2.38 and 3.5 GHz bands
diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, the unidirectional radiation are covered, and the low profile is achieved. Furthermore, the
pattern with circular polarization (CP) is preferred as it can proposed antenna adopts all-textile flexible materials, enhancing
mitigate polarization mismatch. its wearing comfort.
Various dual-band wearable antennas have been reported.
Single-layer antenna designs consisting of textile materials are
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND DISCUSSION
Manuscript received September 28, 2020; revised October 15, 2020; accepted
October 17, 2020. Date of publication October 20, 2020; date of current A. Antenna Design
version December 22, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61372008, in part by the
The geometry of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 1(a).
Science and Technology Planning Projects of Guangdong Province under Grant As can be seen, a rectangular patch is etched on the top of the
2014A010103014 and Grant 2015B010101006, and in part by the Foundation substrate, while a full ground plane is printed on its bottom. Two
of the State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science under Grant pairs of shorting pins are loaded symmetrically in the diagonal
2020ZA05. (Corresponding author: Xiongying Liu.) of the antenna, which can maintain the symmetry of the antenna
The authors are with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering,
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China (e-mail:
and realize the dual-band operation with the enhanced frequency
eeyanghc@mail.scut.edu.cn; liuxy@scut.edu.cn). tuning freedom. To achieve polarization diversity, a pair of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2020.3032540 degenerated modes is generated by symmetrically cutting off
1536-1225 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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 YANG AND LIU: WEARABLE DUAL-BAND AND DUAL-POLARIZED TEXTILE ANTENNA FOR ON- AND OFF-BODY COMMUNICATIONS 2325

TABLE I
DIELECTRIC PROPERTIES AND THICKNESSES OF THE TISSUE

Fig. 3. General networks for modeling of the MPA in (a) Case 1, (b) Case 2,
and (c) Case 3.

Fig. 2. Evolution of the proposed antenna. (a) Case 1. (b) Case 2. (c) Case 3.

slant corners on the patch. Hence, the CP radiation is generated

in the upper band and the impedance bandwidth is broadened. A
linear slot is cut in the radiation patch, neutralizing the equivalent Fig. 4. (a) Graphical sketch of the left and right sides of resonance frequency
inductance caused by shorting pins and improving impedance characteristic equation versus frequency. (b) Simulated |S11 | for the three cases
in Fig. 2 with the insets of the electric field distribution.
matching.
The proposed antenna employs flexible felt as the substrate
with a relative permittivity of εr = 1.2, a loss tangent of tan
δ = 0.02, and a thickness of h = 2 mm. The radiation patch
and ground plane are made of conductive nylon fabric with
a thickness of 0.13 mm and a surface resistivity of less than
0.009 Ω/sq [18]. In addition, the hollow copper rivets are used
as shorting pins to connect the radiation patch with the ground
plane well. The optimized values of the geometrical parameters
with the aid of ANSYS HFSS v.18 are listed as: Ws = 70 mm,
Wp = 51 mm, D = 30 mm, w1 = 0.5 mm, wf = 5.5 mm, l1 =
24 mm, lf = 9.5 mm, rp = 0.5 mm, c = 7 mm, d = 5.2 mm, and
Fig. 5. Two resonant frequencies of the proposed antenna as a function of (a)
h = 2 mm. D/Wp and (b) rp .
For the proposed antenna that is worn on the human body, the
human body can be considered as the loading of the antenna.
Therefore, a three-layer phantom is constructed, as shown in where Xr represents the reactance of the resonant part of the
Fig. 1(b), composed of skin, fat, and muscle layers. To save antenna, XL is the reactance caused by the loading of shorting
the computation time and clarify the illustration, the human pins, ξ is the modification factor related to loading position, and
phantom is simplified with the dimensions of 150 mm × 150 mm the Xf is feed reactance, which can be given as
× 30 mm, which can enable the distance between the antenna Xf = 2πf L (2)
and the outer edge of the phantom much greater than a quarter-

wavelength at 2.38 GHz. The electrical properties at 2.38 and where f denotes the resonant frequency and L is a series induc-
3.5 GHz and the thickness of each tissue are listed in Table I [19]. tor formed by higher order modes. In this case, the resonance
Considering the actual wearing scenario, the felt material with condition can be defined as X = 0. That is, the characteristic
a thickness of 3 mm is filled between the antenna and phantom, equation of resonance frequency can be written as
imitating clothes.
Xr = −Xf − ξXL . (3)
B. Operating Mechanism Fig. 4(a) illustrates a graphical sketch of the left and right
sides of (3) when the MPA in Case 1 is loaded with two pairs of
As described in [20], the antenna can achieve dual-band
shorting pins. As can be seen, there are two intersections between
operation by loading a shorting pin on a single radiation patch. To
two types of curves at the frequencies of f00 and f10 , which
illustrate the design mechanism, the proposed antenna is evolved
indicates that dual bands are generated. Furthermore, TM10
from Case 1 to Case 3, as shown in Fig. 2. The corresponding  

equivalent RLC network [21] is introduced to characterize reso- mode is separated into mode 1(f10 ) and mode 2(f10 ) by using
nant modes of the antenna. As shown in Fig. 3 (a), single mode corner truncation technology, as shown in Fig. 3(c). Simulated
of TM10 in the general network of traditional rectangular MPA |S11 | for the three cases are plotted in Fig. 4(b), illustrating the
is generated with the resonant frequency f10 . With reference design process of the antenna. First, f10 is generated in Case
to Fig. 3(b), near resonant mode of the loaded cavity, the total 1 with a traditional rectangular MPA. Second, as two pairs of
reactance can be written as shorting pins are loaded on the MPA, f10 shifts to high frequency
and a new frequency of f00 is generated in Case 2. However, only
X = Xr + Xf + ξXL (1) linear polarization (LP) appears at f10 with narrow bandwidth in
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 2326
Fig. 6. Electric field distributions along a vertical direction at (a) 2.38 and
(b) 3.5 GHz. (c) Surface current distributions at 3.5 GHz.
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured |S11 | in different scenarios.
Fig. 8. Simulated and measured results of the proposed antenna on phantom.
(a) Gain and AR. (b) Radiation efficiency.
Case 2. Third, in Case 3, a pair of degenerated modes (i.e., f10

and f10 ) are generated by cutting off symmetrical slant corners
on the patch, achieving CP radiation.
To further explain the idea of the proposed antenna, two
resonant frequencies f00 and f10 as a function of D/Wp are
graphically depicted in Fig. 5(a). It can be observed that both f00
and f10 increase as D/Wp changes from 0.2 to 0.55. After that,
f00 starts to decrease while f10 keeps increasing. It is concluded
that adjusting D can tune f10 in a wider range. Fig. 5(b) depicts
the two resonance frequencies f00 and f10 as a function of rp .
Note that, changing rp can synchronously tune f00 and f10 .
Herein, with D/Wp = 0.59 and rp = 0.5 mm, the expected
resonant frequencies of 2.38 and 3.5 GHz can be obtained.
C. Polarization and Radiation Mode Diversity
Without losing generality, the electric field distributions of the
proposed antenna in dual bands are computed, as illustrated in
Fig. 6(a) and (b). It can be observed that a new mode of TM00 is
generated at 2.38 GHz, which will produce an omnidirectional
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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2020
Fig. 9. Simulated and measured normalized radiation patterns of the proposed
antenna on phantom at (a) 2.38 and (b) 3.5 GHz.
Fig. 10. Simulated and measured |S11 | of the proposed antenna in different
bending radius.

Fig. 11. Simulated maximum SAR distributions in 1 g average tissue at 2.38
and 3.5 GHz on (a) arm, (b) leg, and (c) chest.
radiation pattern, while at 3.5 GHz, the TM10 mode with a
unidirectional radiation pattern is realized. Moreover, Fig. 6(c)
illustrates that the surface current on the patch at 3.5 GHz rotates
in a counterclockwise direction, thus radiating the right-handed
CP (RHCP) wave.
III. SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS
To validate the numerical model and verify the simulated
results, a proof-of-concept prototype was fabricated. |S11 | was
measured on the human body by using an Agilent N5230A
vector network analyzer and the radiation characteristics, such
as gains, polarizations, and radiation patterns, were measured
on a piece of fresh pork in the anechoic chamber.
 YANG AND LIU: WEARABLE DUAL-BAND AND DUAL-POLARIZED TEXTILE ANTENNA FOR ON- AND OFF-BODY COMMUNICATIONS
TABLE II
COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA WITH PRIOR ARTS
L: Linear. C: Circular. U: Unidirectional. O: Omnidirectional. λ0 : Wavelength at the lower frequency band in free space.
A. Measured Results on Body
With reference to Fig. 7, the measured results in different
scenarios of pork, chest, leg, and arm coincide well, having
good immunity to the influence of the human body. The slight
frequency offset in the lower band is mainly due to the fabrication
tolerances and welding parts. On average, the measured relative
impedance bandwidths on the body are about 4.1% (2.385–
2.485 GHz) in the lower band and 7.0% (3.400–3.645 GHz)
in the upper band. Additionally, as seen from the dotted line
in Fig. 8, the measured peak gains (radiation efficiencies) in
the lower and upper bands reach 1.38 dBi (63.3%) and 7.7 dBi
(59.2%), respectively. Besides, the AR around 3.5 GHz is less
than 3 dB, achieving good CP performance.
The simulated and measured normalized radiation patterns on
the phantom are analyzed. As shown in Fig. 9(a), the monopole-
like radiation patterns with vertical polarization are generated
at 2.38 GHz, which is desirable for on-body communications.
Moreover, as displayed in Fig. 9(b), the unidirectional radiation
patterns with RHCP are achieved at 3.5 GHz with the cross-
polarization ratio of more than 18 dB in the broadside direction,
which implies good polarization purity, and is preferable for
off-body communications.
B. Robustness to Structural Deformation
Since the shape of human body is rugged, the wearable anten-
nas should be conformal to the body for comfort. To investigate
the conformability, the proposed antenna is bent with three dif-
ferent radii of R = 50, 75, and 100 mm, representing arm, leg, and
chest. For measurement, the different-radius cylindrical models
filled with fresh pork were fabricated, as shown in the inset of
Fig. 10. It can be observed that the measured and simulated
results of the two frequency bands are in strong agreement. The
measured frequency shift percentage is less than 1.7%, which
indicates that the proposed antenna has good robustness.
Moreover, the radiation patterns under different bending sce-
narios in the dual bands are analyzed. The numerical and exper-
imental results illustrated that the radiation of the proposed de-
sign is immune to the structural deformation. Due to the limited
space in the letter, the radiation patterns are not demonstrated.
C. Evaluation of Wearable Safety
As the proposed wearable antenna leaks electromagnetic
radiation toward the human body, human health is at risk of
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2327
hazard. Thus, the specific absorption rate (SAR) is evaluated to
guarantee health safety. The Hugo voxel model is introduced in
the CST Microwave Suite to mimic close to a real human body.
The proposed antenna is placed 3 mm high above the phantom.
As a benchmark, the power received by the antenna is set to
0.5 W. The simulated SARs of the antenna on different parts of
the human body at 2.38 and 3.5 GHz are shown in Fig. 11(a)–(c).
It can be observed that in all the scenarios, the maximum SAR
in 1 g average tissue is less than 0.722 W/kg, meeting the IEEE
C95.1-2005 standard of 1.6 W/kg.
D. Performance Comparison
In Table II, the performance of the proposed antenna is com-
pared with the previously reported dual-band wearable antennas.
In [5]–[7], they are only applicable to off-body communica-
tions due to single-polarization and unidirectional radiation.
In [8]–[11], as the substrates are rigid, it is difficult for the
antennas to conform to the human body. In [15]–[17], compared
with the proposed antenna, the reported antennas suffer from
a large size or single-polarization radiation mode, and adopt
the probe feeding structure, making them inconvenient to wear.
Hence, the proposed antenna has the advantages of low profile,
conformability, dual bands, dual polarizations, and on-/off-body
communications.
IV. CONCLUSION
A dual-band wearable MPA with the diversities of polariza-
tion and radiation has been presented. By adopting the probe
loading and corner truncation technology, the proposed antenna
achieves LP omnidirectional radiation at 2.38 GHz for on-body
communications and CP unidirectional radiation at 3.5 GHz
for off-body communications. The operating mechanism of the
antenna is analyzed and the effects of structural deformation and
human body loading are investigated. To validate the proposed
design, a prototype was fabricated and measured in different
scenarios. All the measured results are consistent with the
simulated ones. Moreover, the SAR values indicate that the
proposed antenna meets the health safety requirements. Overall,
the antenna has the merit of dual bands, dual polarizations,
flexibility, and robust performance, which makes it a potential
candidate for multifunctional wearable devices.
 2328 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2020
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