A compact wideband dielectric resonator antenna for on-body applications

This paper presents the design of an on-body wideband dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) for medical applications. The antenna is tested on a homogenous numerical phantom modeling a human arm. This low-profile antenna consists of three different dielectric segments and small metallic patches, which reside above a rectangular ground plane. It is excited by a coaxial probe. The volume of DRA is reduced by using multi-segment dielectric, and by adding a finite planar conducting wall. The proposed DRA has good radiation characteristics, and radiates power away from the body. It offers a predicted 10 dB return loss bandwidth of 74% between 4.4 and 9.7 GHz.