Characterisation of printed UWB antennas for on-body communications

Low-profile, compact and easily integrated body worn antennas are the essence of efficient, reliable and user-friendly body-centric networks. The paper presents different planar printed ultra wideband (UWB) antennas and their applications as part of on-body communication systems. Both frequency and time domain characteristics of the proposed antennas are investigated and analysed. The paper emphasises the importance of chosen frequency band on propagation channels behaviour. On-body propagation characterisation is experimentally investigated to highlight antennas and human body effects on radio channels and consequently on the wireless body-centric network performance.