Radiation improvement of CPW- Hexagonal antenna using Rotated Hexagonal AMC for WBAN/ISM/5G application

This study presents a high-gain CPW-fed flexible hexagonal loop antenna integrated with a Rotated Hexagonal Artificial Magnetic Conductor (RH-AMC) for Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) applications. The proposed antenna operates in the WBAN/ISM/Wi-MAX and 5G band at 3.5 GHz. The flexible polyimide substrate is used to design the antenna, with a thickness of 1.6 mm, a dielectric constant of 3.5, and a loss tangent of 0.025. The initially designed antenna has a gain of 2.05 dB at 3.5 GHz with a return loss of -18 dB. The impedance bandwidth obtained for the antenna is 1200 MHz. Further, rotated hexagonal artificial magnetic conductor unit cells are designed, and analysis is performed with [2×2] and [3×3] AMC arrays integrated with the antenna. The proposed high-gain antenna offers significant gain enhancement of up to 5.83 dB while preserving a height of 11 mm between the antenna and the AMC ground. The improved gain and compact profile (25×20×1.6 mm³), along with flexibility, make this antenna more suitable for on-body healthcare monitoring systems and 5G (FR-1)/WBAN/Wi-MAX applications requiring reliable communication links.