Wearable Endfire Textile Antenna for On-Body Communications at 60 GHz

Author

Chahat, Nacer ; Zhadobov, Maxim ; Coq, LaurentLe ; Sauleau, Ronan

Author_Institution

Inst. of Electron. & Telecommun. of Rennes (IETR), Univ. of Rennes 1, Rennes, France

Volume

11

fYear

2012

fDate

7/4/1905 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

799

Lastpage

802

Abstract

A textile endfire antenna operating in the 60-GHz band is proposed for wireless body area networks (BANs). The permittivity of the textile substrate has been accurately characterized, and the Yagi-Uda antenna has been fabricated using an ad hoc manufacturing process. Its performance in terms of reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, gain, and efficiency has been studied in free space and on a tissue-equivalent phantom representing the human body. It is shown that the antenna is matched in the 57-64-GHz band. Its measured on-body efficiency and maximum gain equal 48.0% and 11.9 dBi, respectively. To our best knowledge, this is the first textile antenna for on-body wireless communications reported at millimeter waves.

Keywords

Yagi antenna arrays; ad hoc networks; antenna radiation patterns; body area networks; millimetre wave antennas; wearable antennas; Yagi-Uda antenna; ad hoc manufacturing process; efficiency 48.0 percent; frequency 57 GHz to 64 GHz; human body; on-body efficiency; on-body wireless communications; radiation pattern; reflection coefficient; textile substrate; tissue-equivalent phantom; wearable endfire textile antenna; wireless BAN; wireless body area networks; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Gain; Phantoms; Reflection; Substrates; Textiles; Body area network (BAN); Yagi–Uda; endfire radiation; millimeter waves; textile antennas; wearable antennas;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-1225

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LAWP.2012.2207698

Filename

6235991