A Survey of On-Body Antenna Arrays: Future improvements, new designs, and lessons learned [Bioelectromagnetics]

This manuscript presents a survey of the existing literature on on-body antenna arrays. They can be used to enable wireless communication to and from different on-body nodes in a wireless body area network (WBAN) and are also used in medical applications. The design process and the required characteristics of on-body antenna arrays are discussed. On-body antenna arrays should be small, lightweight, and low profile to ensure user comfort. The different types of on-body antenna arrays are discussed as well. On-body antenna arrays differ in the type of antenna element and in the geometric configuration of the array. The gain normalized to the area for the antenna arrays is compared, and it is found that, in the current state of the art, this quantity reduces with increasing frequency from 36 to 0.7 dBi. From our literature review, we draw important lessons that can be used to develop future on-body antenna arrays.