A Dual- and Wideband Textile Monopole Integrated with an AMC Plane for WBAN-UWB Application

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a wearable dual- and wideband monopole antenna using textile for the Wireless Body Area Network-Ultra Wideband (WBAN-UWB). This antenna is designed based on a monopole antenna aimed at operation in the mandatory WBAN-UWB channels centered at 4 GHz (channel 1) and 8 GHz (channel 6) based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. To alleviate the influence of operating close to the body and maintaining its low-profile structure for wearable application, the proposed antenna is integrated with an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) plane. This AMC plane can be placed close to the radiator as a Perfect Magnetic Conductor (PMC) plane. The AMC unit cell is designed based on a square patch with four slits, one on each of its side. This unit cell is then multiplied as a 3 × 3 array to form the AMC plane. It operated with a ±90° zero-phase reflection bandwidth of 222.95 MHz in the lower band (centered at 4 GHz) and 561.38 MHz in the upper band (centered at 8 GHz). The incorporation of the AMC onto the monopole antenna resulted in the widening of the overall structure’s 10 dB impedance bandwidth. Measurements of the antenna fabricated fully using textiles indicated an operation from 5.2 to 5.69 GHz in the WLAN band, and from 6.77 to 8.48 GHz in the WBAN-UWB band, while maintaining an overall size of 40 × 40 × 3 mm3. Its gain is 4.76 dBi and 1.76 dBi when assessed at 5.5 and 8 GHz, respectively.