Dual-Band Textile Antenna With Dual Circular Polarizations Using Polarization Rotation AMC for Off-Body Communications

A dual-circular polarization (CP) textile antenna is investigated for wearable applications at 3.5 GHz WiMAX and 5.8 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical bands. The proposed antenna is composed of a dual-band monopole antenna and a polarization rotation artificial magnetic conductor (PRAMC). Through the PRAMC, the dual-CP radiation is enabled and the backward radiation is alleviated, in which the left-handed CP is generated in the lower band and the right-handed CP is realized in the upper band. Notably, dyadic reflection coefficient analysis is employed to understand the operating mechanism. Both monopole and PRAMC are printed on textile substrate, achieving conformability and comfortability. In addition, numerical results indicate that the performance of the antenna is robust to lossy human body and structural deformations. For verification, the prototype of the antenna was fabricated by two types of manufacturing process (i.e., laser cutting and screen printing), and the advantages and drawbacks of each fabricating approach are discussed for referring. The antenna made by laser cutting was tested on the phantom with the −10 dB impedance bandwidths of 11.7% and 9.1%, the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidths of 2.0% and 8.2%, and the peak gains of 6.6 and 7.2 dBic, in dual bands, respectively.