Wearable Soft Grid Array Antenna for S-band 5G Communication

Abstract

Potential convergence of wearable and epidermal antennas for battery-less communication with the emerging 5G framework, may boost the ultrafast and delay-free monitoring of biophysical parameters. 3.6 GHz epidermal antennas have already been demonstrated to possibly provide the same performance of a conventional UHF RFID link but with much larger band. Even better performance can be achieved by using wearable grid-arrays that may increase the read distance up to 6m in battery-less mode while keeping the feeding and fabrication complexity low. Here, the optimal performance of on-skin grid-arrays are investigated and a first prototype is manufactured and tested onto a body phantom.