Study of penetration ratio using UWB antenna with an in vivo subject

This paper presents a study of the penetration ratio through the human tissue for Body Area Network (BAN) applications of a compact antenna with directive behavior and wide impedance matching. The antenna is a coplanar UWB monopole covering the band from 2.8 GHz to 13.8 GHz. To analyze the penetration ratio of the antenna, two experiments using a phantom and an in vivo subject have been carried out. According to the experiments and the measured results, the antenna with enhanced radiation pattern and wide impedance matching, leads to a very good penetration into the human tissue. Measurements have been performed to demonstrate the validity of the simulated antenna performance through two experiments. The optimized UWB antenna displays a penetration ratio up to 17 cm in pure fat phantom and up to 16 cm in an in vivo subject, combined with a matching band of more than 10 GHz.