The effect of antenna pattern and polarization for launching creeping waves on a skin surface

Investigations of wave propagation in the proximity of human body tissues are required in order to design a reliable wireless body area network (WBAN). This paper shows creeping wave (CW) propagation properties along a skin tissue surface at 2.45 GHz for three antenna types. Dipole, discone and patch antennas with different pattern properties are examined. In this study, antenna polarization is normal, tangential or their mixture relatively to the surface. Performance is compared in free space and close to the skin models. The polarization normal to a tissue surface is by far shown to outperform the tangentially polarized counterpart, as expected, for channel paths along the cylindrical models. It is efficient for links around a body (abdomen-spine), as over 40 dB gain improvements were seen in this study. The present paper provides perspective for the eligible properties of on-body antennas.