Conformal eight‐port dual band antenna with switchable radiation pattern for 5G enabled on‐body wireless communications

Abstract

AbstractA novel conformal quasi‐yagi antenna and its Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) implementations for wireless body area networks (WBAN) application is reported in this letter. The antenna is developed on a 0.05 mm thin polyimide substrate making the antenna more flexible and conformal. The footprint of the proposed antenna is 35 × 35 mm with a dual dipole arm‐like structure making it resonant at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz covering the industrial scientific and medical and 5G bands for WBAN communications. The antenna is excited using a microstrip‐to‐slotline termination suitably terminated by a circular patch to realize the impedance matching. The ground plane is shaped to maintain good isolation between neighboring antennas during the eight‐element MIMO antenna development. The MIMO antennas are arranged circularly to achieve good antenna coverage along the azimuth directions. The antenna generates a tangential radiation pattern to the plane of the human body making it suitable for on‐body wireless communications. The proposed antenna offers a rotatable radiation pattern by appropriately choosing the antenna port of excitation. The proposed MIMO antenna offers an average gain of 4.5 and 5.2 dBi at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz, respectively. The MIMO antenna parameters are evaluated and presented. The calculated MIMO parameters are within the acceptable limits. Thus, the flexible nature with rotatable directional radiation patterns has made this antenna an attractive choice for on‐body communications in WBAN.