Wearable fabric reconfigurable beam steering antenna for on/off-body communication system

This work presents a comparison of on/off-body performances between omni-directional (loop antenna) and reconfigurable beam steering antennas. Both omni-directional and reconfigurable antennas were operated at the frequency band of the WLAN 802.11a (5.725-5.85 GHz). The reconfigurable antenna was designed to steer the beam directions using two PIN diodes. The measured peak gains were 5.9-6.6 dBi and the overall half power beam width (HPBW) was 102à. The measured results of total radiated power (TRP) and total isotropic sensitivity (TIS) indicated that the communication efficiency of the reconfigurable antenna was better than that of the loop antenna. In addition, the simulated specific absorption rate (SAR) values of the reconfigurable antenna on the body were satisfying the SAR criteria.