Summary
International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation
2010
Session Number:2KS
Session:
Number:2KS-3
Small Antennas for Body-Centric Communications
Koichi Ito,
pp.-
Publication Date:2010/11/23
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
In recent years, a study on body-centric communications has become an active and attractive area of research because of their various applications such as e-healthcare, support systems for specialized occupations, monitoring systems for elderly and handicapped people, entertainment, and so on. Whereas UHF bands are subjects of interest especially in Europe and USA, HF bands are of great interest especially in Japan and Korea. Hence, all of the prospective frequencies are in an extremely wide range, and an objective idea on how to select a right frequency band for individual applications is required. As for the antennas, many types of wearable (on-body) and implantable (in-body) antennas have been reported, and they should be as small as possible. Currently in our laboratory, we have been studying on frequency dependence of basic characteristics of simple wearable antennas as well as body-centric wireless communication channels in the range of HF to UHF (3 MHz ? 3 GHz). Also, we have been investigating numerically and experimentally thin implantable antennas in UHF band. In this presentation, firstly, electric field distributions around the human body wearing a small top-loaded monopole antenna are numerically calculated and compared in a wide range of HF to UHF bands. Then, received open voltages at receiving antennas which are equipped at several different points on the human body are numerically investigated. The received open voltages are also numerically calculated and compared with several different postures of the human body. Finally, some basic performances of miniaturized thin implantable antennas are numerically calculated in UHF band. Experimental validation is also demonstrated.