Design of wearable antenna with compact artificial magnetic conductor reflecting plate

This paper presents a wearable antenna design for the body area network application. The presented antenna consists of two parts: a microstrip patch antenna with the flexible material substrate as the radiation source and a compact artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) with new hexagon unit as the reflector. The simulation and measurement results show that on the one hand, the new AMC structure is a better candidate for the miniaturization design concept compared with the standard hexagon structure; on the other hand, the introduction of such AMC reflector not only increases the isolation between antenna system and human body, which can be quantified by the specific absorption rate (SAR), but also improves the forward gain of the patch antenna.