A Novel Small-Size Printed Tapered Monopole Antenna for UWB WBAN

In this letter, a novel antenna topology based on the printed tapered monopole antenna (PTMA) is investigated in view of ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless body area network (WBAN) applications. First, the bandwidth in the presence of a human arm is studied. Second, the pulse distortion of a modulated Gaussian pulse is investigated, based on measured $ S_21$-parameters. We observe that there is a small acceptable influence on the matching of the antenna and that the pulse distortion is low. The main conclusion is that this modified PTMA is a very good candidate for WBAN UWB applications.