Stub-loaded printed antenna with a ground plane and electromagnetically coupled feed for 2.45GHz body area networks

Abstract

This paper presents a stub-loaded printed antenna with a full ground plane and electromagnetically coupled feed for body area network devices operating in industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band at 2.45 GHz. Performance and characteristics are presented along with parametric analyses. Antenna performance is investigated under bending to check its suitability for conformal body centric wireless communication devices. The electromagnetically-coupled feed is tuned to fill a null in the radiation pattern and to achieve impedance matching, which is further fine tuned by stub loading. The proposed antenna exhibits a wide radiation pattern along the body surface to provide maximum coverage and its narrow physical width (14mm) makes it suitable for on-body applications.