Abstract
The majority of wearable and flexible 5G and 6G devices are based on plastic substrates, that are harmful to the environment. Therefore, the development of sustainable and plastic-free radio frequency (RF) devices becomes a crucial issue. In this regard, we present a fully biocompatible Planar Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA), fabricated on a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$55 ~\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -thick chitosan substrate. Chitosan has a relative dielectric constant of 5. This antenna is working at 4.5 GHz in the sub-6 GHz band of the 5G spectrum. It has a very compact footprint of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$14\times23$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm2 and a Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of 0.41 W/kg. The prototype has been fabricated using an innovative fabrication protocol. A very good agreement between numerical and experimental results has been obtained. The measured realized gain is equal to 1 dBi at the resonant frequency. Our results demonstrate the suitability of chitosan as a dielectric substrate for the fabrication of plastic-free antennas and paves the way for the development of sustainable wearable devices for the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) applications.
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