Design of flexible dual-band antenna and metamaterial structure for wearable body area network

To adapt to the application of wireless body area network (WBAN), a wearable flexible dual-band antenna is developed, which has a compact size of 17 x 29 x 0.15 mm(3) and a better bandwidth of 61.2% and 43.1% at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz, respectively. The dual-band characteristic is achieved by slotting technique without changing the contour size. A dual-band metamaterial structure (MS) is designed to improve radiation performance and reduce the specific absorption rate (SAR) of the proposed antenna. To verify the validity of the MS, we build two simulation human models. The forward gain of the antenna is increased and the SAR is significantly decreased when adding the MS between antenna and human skin. The antenna is designed and fabricated on a flexible substrate, and its performance is verified for both flat and curved configurations. To examine its performance as a wearable antenna, it is measured on a human body. The measurements show an excellent agreement with the simulations. Good performances of designed antenna make it potential to application of the miniaturized wearable devices.