Conformal design of a 60 GHz textile based self-complementary antenna for wireless body area network

Abstract

A self-complementary single element conformal antenna design has been presented in this paper for wireless body area networks (WBANs) that operate in the millimeter-wave spectrum range. The antenna is designed using a cotton-based substrate to keep it flexible and bendable to various degrees of angle, making it suitable to conform to naturally curved human body surfaces. Throughout the research, several computer simulation-based analyses have been done to identify the performance of the antenna. The free space simulation result of the antenna reveals a wide bandwidth under -10 dB with a resonant point at 60 GHz. The antenna has a dimension of 19.8 mm x 15 mm x 1.57 mm, including its substrate. With >92 percent efficiency, the antenna achieves a superb gain value of >10 dB To check the bending effect on the antenna, the design has been tested with five different bending angles from 30° to 70°. The antenna is designed to be implemented on the wireless body area network. The newly proposed conformal antenna has then been tested on a virtually created human torso phantom to carry out its human on-body performance check. For in-depth analysis, five different bending angles, including the curved torso, and five different distances from the human body have been performed. The antenna shows very stable results in all odd scenarios during its on-body tests. Based on the simulations, 2 mm to 6 mm gaps from the torso appear to produce the best results, with over 9 dB of gain and 70 % efficiency.