Design of a Wideband L-Shape Fed Microstrip Patch Antenna Backed by Conductor Plane for Medical Body Area Network

Abstract

This paper describes a compact patch antenna intended for medical body area network. The antenna is fed using a proximity coupling scheme to support the antenna that radiates in the free space and on the human body at the 2.45 GHz ISM band. The conductor plane is placed 2 mm or 0.0163λ0 (λ0 is free space wavelength at 2.45 GHz) below the antenna to reduce backward radiation to the human body. Separation distance must be kept above 2 mm, otherwise, gain of the proposed antenna decreases when antenna is situated on the human body. The L-shape feed line is introduced to overcome impedance mismatch caused by the compact structure. The coupling gap between the proposed antenna and the length of the L-shape feed line are optimized to generate dual resonances mode for wide impedance bandwidth. Simulation results show that specific absorption rate (SAR) of the proposed antenna with L-shape feed line is lower than conventional patch antenna with direct microstrip feed line. The proposed antenna achieves impedance bandwidth of 120 MHz (4.89%) at the center frequency of 2.45 GHz. The maximum gain in the broadside direction is 6.2 dBi in simulation and 5.09 dBi in measurement for antenna in the free space. Wide impedance bandwidth and radiation patterns insensitive to the presence of human body are achieved, which meets the requirement of IoT-based wearable sensor.