Summary

International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation

2010

Session Number:3TA1

Session:

Number:3TA1-3

A Small Planar Inverted-F Antenna for Body-Centric Wireless Communications

Zhengyi Li,  Kazuyuki Saito,  Masaharu Takahashi,  Koichi Ito,  Yi Huang,  

pp.-

Publication Date:2010/11/23

Online ISSN:2188-5079

DOI:10.34385/proc.52.3TA1-3

PDF download (146.2KB)

Summary:
Recently, the study on body-centric wireless communications has become a very active area of research. By adopting body-centric wireless communications, numerous applications will be enhanced, such as personal healthcare, smart home, personal entertainment, and identification systems. However, the human body environment is uninviting and often hostile for a wireless signal [1]. Therefore, as an interface between the transceiver and propagation environment, antennas in these systems need to be carefully designed. This is a big challenge for antenna designers. A small cavity slot antenna proposed in [2] is a good example. The antenna has a relatively high efficiency in the vicinity of the human body owing to the effects of equivalent magnetic current. Accordingly, the general requirements for antennas in body-centric wireless communications are summarized: small size, low profile, and high efficiency [2]. In [3], a circular patch antenna was designed for Bluetooth applications. The study also investigated the bending effects on input-impedance matching and impedance bandwidth. Besides, EBG materials were also adopted in a 2.45-GHz patch antenna to enhance the surface wave propagation [4]. These antennas are of low profile but considering the antenna size they are relatively large. The planar inverted-F antenna is a suitable candidate. It is relatively immune to fading during body postures’ changing because of their nondirectivity [5]. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a small planar inverted-F antenna for body-centric wireless communications. By introducing a small L-shaped ground shield, the antenna has a relatively high efficiency of more than 50% even in the vicinity of the human body. The operation bandwidth reaches about 110 MHz, covering the whole Bluetooth band (2400 - 2480 MHz).