Compact Dual Band Antenna for Off-Body-Centric

Communications
Ali Araghi, Mohsen Khalily, Amirhossein Alizadeh Ghannad, Pei Xiao, Rahim Tafazolli
Institute for Communication Systems, Home of 5G Innovation Centre, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
{a.araghi, m.khalily, a.a.ghannad, p.xiao, r.tafazolli}@surrey.ac.uk

Abstract—A compact size, dual-band wearable antenna for radiation pattern will be distorted. Therefore, to design an
off-body communication operating at the both 2.45 and 5.8 antenna for BCC precisely, the presence of the human body
GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band is must be taken into account from the outset.
presented. The antenna is a printed monopole on an FR4 There are several types of wearable antennas for BCC
substrate with a modified loaded ground plane to make the
antenna profile compact. Antennas’ radiation characteristics where, the most important types are button antennas [4, 5, 6],
have been optimized while the proposed antenna placed close textile antennas [7, 8], and printed microstrip antennas [3, 9].
to the human forearm. The fabricated antenna operating on Button antennas are less sensitive to human proximity due to
the forearm has been measured to verify the simulation results. their rigid structure. However, they require a comparatively
Index Terms—body centric communication, wearable large size supporting conducting plate1 [5] which does not
devices, dual band antenna, specific absorption rate (SAR). facilitate integration with human clothes. Moreover, they are
geometrically less compatible with ordinary clothes
I. INTRODUCTION comparing to the other two aforementioned types of
wearable antennas.
In the last two decades, body centric communication Although textile antennas seems to be a suitable
(BCC) has received extensive attention due to its potential candidate for BCC, they suffer from an undeniable
applications and a number of studies have been conducted in impairment: the flexible substrate results in considerable
this field of study [1, 2]. Wearable antennas are necessary variations of antenna’s operating frequency and may cause
component of the BCC systems in wireless personal area the antenna to be out of the band in an unpredictable manner,
network (WPAN) and wireless body area network (WBAN). depending on the gesture of human body and clothes.
There are number of specialized occupation segments that Furthermore, the definition of “textile antenna” is quite
apply BCC systems such as health monitoring, paramedics, challenging as the antenna is attached by a rigid, metallic
fire fighters, and military. However, with the emergence of SMA port.
the internet of things (IoT), it is plausible that the need of Printed antenna on ordinary substrates offers a number of
“being connected” in every possible manners will become at benefits including availability and low cost which can be
its most attention and wearable devices would absolutely be designed for a number of applications. They can be
a practical solution in this regards. On the other hand, the integrated into clothes without considerable changes in their
2.45 and 5.8 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) style; for instance, they can be mounted between the layers
band have been allocated for BCC systems [3]. of a jacket or be placed on the collar of a shirt without any
BCC can be categorized mainly in three different substantial effect. Furthermore, due to their rigid
domains regarding to the direction of connection, i.e. in- construction, they will be less sensitive to human body
body, on-body, and off-body communication [1]. The first movement. Also, they are less affected by different gestures
scenario is the sensors implanted inside the human body and of the clothes comparing to the textile antennas. Therefore,
the corresponding antenna system is an inter-tissue these antennas constitute a promising candidate to be utilized
implanted device with a repeater on the skin. On-body for BCC [1, 3, 9].
scenario refers to the situation in which a number of antennas In this paper, a novel compact size wearable microstrip
(sensors) are placed on the body and they need to antenna is proposed to operate at both standard ISM bands
communicate with each other within the BAN. The third for off-body applications. The antenna’s physical
scenario, which is the most practical one, is for transferring characteristic is optimized close to the human forearm to
the collected data from the sensors to the environment have a proper performance. SAR analysis for transmit mode
around the human body, such as a processing machine, is calculated and based on the maximum allowable transmit
monitoring center, and broadly speaking to make a PAN power, the contours of coverage are obtained.
between a number of people and devices which are close to
each other.
Basically, when an antenna is placed near the human 1
Generally considered as the ground plane or a conducting plate in order to
body, the operating frequency will be shifted and the decrease the effect of human body on the antenna performance.
 Fig. 2 The fabricated antenna, a) front view, b) back view, and c) placed on
the forearm measurement scenario.

Fig. 1 Antenna dimensions, a) top view and b) back view.

TABLE I. THE PROPOSED ANTENNA DIMENSIONS

Parameter Dimension Parameter Dimension

(mm) (mm)
l1 30 w1 16
l2 12 w2 2
l3 2 w3 3.35
l4 3 w4 1.3
l5 4.88 w5 3
l6 11.6 w6 1
Fig. 3 Simulated and measured S11 of the proposed antenna placed 2 mm
far from human forearm.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The proposed antenna geometry is presented in Fig. 1. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The antenna layout is attached on an FR4 substrate with the
A. Reflection Coefficient
thickness of 1.6 mm and the dielectric constant of 4.4. The
antenna consists of a mushroom-shaped radiator element and The optimized antenna is prototyped. Front and back
modified ground plane. This ground plane is reactively view of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 2 (a) and (b),
loaded [10, 11] in order to make the antenna size compact. respectively. The antenna prototype has been fixed on a
The largest dimension of the antenna is 30mm ~ 0.24λ0 (λ0 is human forearm to measure its performance (see Fig. 2 (c)).
the wavelength at 2.45 GHz) which is well below the half- Simulated and measured S-parameter of the proposed
wavelength at 2.45 GHz (61.22mm). A human forearm antenna is presented in Fig. 3. As shown in the figure, the
phantom is placed at 2 mm apart from the antenna ground proposed antenna operates at both 2.45 and 5.8 GHz ISM
plane along z-axis in Fig. 1. Basically, to model the phantom, bands and the simulated and measurement results are in a
two approaches are available: the first one is to define good agreement.
multilayer phantom with the frequency-depended parameters
of different human tissues (Table 1 of [6]). The second B. Radiation Performance
approach uses the build-in voxel models of complete human The simulated radiation pattern of the proposed antenna
body. This method is more accurate and voxel models are is shown in Fig. 4. The antenna radiation pattern is a
compatible with the full-wave package CST- MW Studio monopole-type, part of which is distorted due to the
2018 [12]. Therefore, to have an antenna with precise proximity of the human forearm. The maximum gain and
dimensions, the forearm of Gustav voxel model has been total efficiency at 2.45 GHz are 6.07 dBi and –9.83 dB
chosen and antenna dimensions are optimized close to the (considering the forearm) respectively while these numbers
phantom as presented in Table 1. are 7.81 dBi and –4.66 dB for 5.8 GHz.
Fig. 4 Simulated radiation pattern of the designed antenna at a) 2.45 GHz and b) 5.8 GHz.

As indicated by Fig. 4, at both the operating frequencies, is absorbed by human’s body and is defined as the power
radiation pattern is directed toward the environment around absorbed per mass of tissue. SAR calculation of the designed
the body rendering off-body communications. This behavior antenna on the voxel-model phantom is fulfilled by using of
is due to the fact that radiating mode will not change while CST-MW Studio. The gap between the antenna and phantom
the operating frequency is changed. More specifically, is set to be 2 mm which is around the thickness of the cloths.
although the wavelength of the two bands of interest are Considering the typical standard of 1.6 W/kg for 1 g
different from each other, the radiating mode remains averaged SAR, the maximum allowable power of the
monopole-type and higher order orthogonal modes [13] will designed antenna in transmitting mode is 62 mW at 2.45
not be excited. It is worth mentioning that exciting both GHz and 77.6 mW at 5.8 GHz which is presented in Fig. 5.
monopole- and patch-mode simultaneously in a single dual- As shown in the figure, the SAR distribution on the forearm
band BCC antenna has been presented before [5, 6] with one follows the same pattern of radiation (see Fig. 4). The hot
mode for the on-body communication while the other for the spot (red one) in Fig. 5-a is wider than that of Fig. 5-b since
off-body application. Such kind of antennas are frequency the radiation pattern of antenna at lower band is more
reconfigurable with respect to the application which means scattered (Fig. 4-a) comparing to higher band (Fig. 4-b).
that one operating band has been specified for the off-body
connection and the other band for the on-body D. Contours of Coverage
communication. Such a dual band dual mode antenna offers Based on the maximum allowable transmit power
only one type of connection per each band/mode, i.e. off- concluded from the SAR analysis for the proposed structure,
body or on-body while they can’t support only off-body/on- the contours of sensitivity is calculated for the antenna
body at both frequency bands. Here, we propose a dual band mounted on body. Considering the free space path loss, and
antenna to support off-body connection at both bands. assuming the antenna is mounted on the forearm of a man
with 1.8 m height, these contours are calculated and
C. SAR Analysis illustrated in Fig. 6. Following is the method of calculation:
Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) value for any radiating From the earth-plane points of view, the radiation pattern
device near the human body is an important issue for safety is something like the ones which are depicted in small
consideration. This factor indicates the rate at which energy proportion at the right side of Fig. 6, i.e. the radiation pattern
 Fig. 5 Simulated SAR (dBW/kg) of the designed antenna at a) 2.45 GHz and b) 5.8 GHz.

toward the +y axis in Fig. 4. To have the contours of

sensitivity, link budget is calculated in all directions from the
antenna “eye” toward the earth-plane according to (1).
SE( dBm) = PT(dBm) + GT (θ ,ϕ )
( dBi )
+ Leff(dB ) − FSPL( dB) (1)
 
EIRP( dBm )

where SE is the sensitivity level of signal on earth-plane,

PT is the transmit power known from SAR analysis, GT is
antenna gain at different directions (Fig. 4), Leff is the
initial loss due to total efficiency (negative number)
presented in subsection-B, and FSPL is the well-known
equation for the free space path loss which is dependent on
the operating frequency and distance. FSPL is the path loss
due to the traveling of wave through an obstacle-free
environment, i.e. the line of sight (LoS) scenario. However,
in practical applications, the channel will not be ideal,
appropriate path loss models [14, 15] other than FSPL
should be taken into account.

IV. CONCLUSION
A compact size dual-band wearable antenna for body
centric communication is introduced in this paper. The
antenna is fabricated and the radiation characteristics of the
proposed antenna have been presented and simulation and
measured results have been compared. The antenna operates
in both 2.45 and 5.8 GHz ISM bands with off-body radiation
pattern. Also, SAR analysis of the antenna on a multilayer
voxel model (skin, fat, muscle, and bone) forearm phantom
Fig. 6 Contours of sensitivity (dBm) in a 400×400 meter2 area for the indicates that the maximum allowable transmitting power is
designed antenna mounted on 1.8 m height man forearm at 2.45GHz (a) 62 mW and 77.6 mW at 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz respectively.
and 5.8GHz (b). The man is placed at (0, 0) point. The results indicate that this antenna has a good potential for
off-body communications by supporting both ISM bands.
The contours of sensitivity is calculated at the both operating
bands according to maximum allowable power that SAR
analysis reveals.

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