3D Printed Miniaturized UWB Antenna for Wireless Body Area Network

Summary, in English

A wireless body area network (WBAN) is a network of compact low power devices that are either wearable or implantable. A compact antenna with suitable radiation pattern and polarization is useful for WBAN applications. Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology can be used in WBAN applications that require high data rates. This paper present a small wearable (15x17x17 mm) UWB antenna designed and optimized in a FDTD full wave simulator. The simulated -10 dB impedance bandwidth is from 4.8 GHz to 29.8 GHz in free space. The lower -10 dB cut-off frequency shifts down to 3.5~GHz when placed on the body. The antenna is vertically polarized with respect to the body which makes it a suitable candidate for on-body to on-body UWB WBAN applications. The antenna was fabricated by 3D printing technology. The measured lower cut-off frequency for an on-body case was found to be 3.6 GHz and the antenna was well-matched in rest of the UWB band.

• Author: Ernesto E. Lopez; Aida Garcia Lopez; Rohit Chandra; Anders J Johansson
• Department/s: Department of Electrical and Information Technology
• Publishing year: 2014
• Language: English
• Pages: 3090-3093
• Publication/Series: 2014 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP)
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EuCAP.2014.6902481
• Document type: Conference paper
• Publisher: IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
• Topic: Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering
• Keywords: UWB antenna; miniaturized antenna; WBAN; 3D printing
• Conference name: 8th European Conference on antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), 2014
• Conference date: 2014-04-06 - 2014-04-11
• Conference place: The Hague, Netherlands
• Status: Published
• Project: EIT_UPD Wireless Communication for Ultra Portable Devices
• Research group: Radio Systems
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 2164-3342