Metamaterial based Flexible Coplanar Antenna Design and Simulation for Human Body Applications

Abstract

This study presents a metamaterial based flexible coplanar antenna designed to operate close to the human model in the 2.45 GHz operation frequency band. Firstly, the reflection values and radiation pattern of the suggested antenna were analyzed. After obtaining good results, electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure that is a kind of metamaterials was designed. Secondly, the EBG and the antenna was combined to form an integrated structure. At the same time, a human model was designed for the integrated structure. Conductive textile fabrics such as pure copper polyester taffeta fabric and felt were used for coplanar antenna and EBG design, respectively. Finally, the specific absorption rate (SAR) values of the coplanar wearable antenna and the integrated model were separately computed. As a result, the proposed EBG structure effectively reduced the SAR value of the integrated model. It was seen that the SAR value of integrated model was suitable with the standard threshold. The originality of the work lies in the use of wearable textile materials and making calculation by applying bend to the proposed structure. In addition, the sharp drop in SAR value from 31.8 to 0.0344 W/kg is remarkable when compared to many studies in the literature. The proposed integrated design has potentials to be applied to many research areas such as the military systems, health applications, and e-textile technologies.