Integration of antennas and high impedance surfaces on ceramic body armor plates

This paper studies the integration of wearable antennas and high impedance surface on ceramic body armor plates. It analyses the performance of wearable antennas on ceramic body armor plates and the use of bullet-resistant ceramic plates as dielectric for high impedance surfaces (HIS). The ceramic ballistic plate employed is a typical ceramic level 3 small arm protective insert (SAPI) used by the police and the military. The radiating element consists of a wire antenna operating at the 400 MHz TETRA band used for emergency services in Europe. Different combinations of antenna, frequency selective surface and the ceramic plate in free space, in the proximity of a metal and the human body are studied. The results show that high impedance structures made of ceramic armor plates can offer useful in-phase reflection bandwidth for antenna systems. Simulations and measurements are presented.