Textile antenna for body centric WiMAX and WLAN applications

Body centric wireless communication refers to inter human and intra human connectivity for various medical and rescue application. A compact and flexible printed textile antenna operable at 5.2GHz for WiMAX and WLAN application has been presented. Wearable 1mm thick blue jeans having relative permittivity 1.67 and loss tangent of 0.01 has been used as substrate material. Return loss, VSWR and radiation pattern have been presented to show the good agreement between the simulated and measured results. Free space and near body scenarios were considered separately while designing and in measurement of results. The proposed antenna exhibits omnidirectional radiation pattern for near body case with suitable gain of 5dB for body centric applications. Simulations were carried out using HFSS (High Frequency Structural Simulator) and measurements were performed using vector network analyzer and anechoic chamber.