All-Textile, Washable Metasurface Antenna for WBAN/WLAN and Mid-Band 5G Applications

In this work, a novel all-textile washable metasurface antenna is designed for WBAN/WLAN and mid-band 5G applications. Initially, a circular microstrip antenna is designed to operate at 5 GHz. Its design parameters are chosen compatible with silver E-thread and polyester dielectric material. Then, metasurface structures are added to the plane of patch to enhance radiation characteristics of the antenna. Metasurface antenna is obtained by covering the top plane of the circular patch antenna with SRR (Split Ring Resonator) metamaterial that shows left-hand characteristics. The metasurface arrays consisting of
$4\times 1$
and
$4\times 2$
SRRs are placed on the antenna surface to both sides of circular patch. The performance of the antenna is verified by a full-wave electromagnetic analysis tool. The results show that metasurface arrays significantly increase gain and efficiency values of the antenna. With the designed metasurface, the efficiency has been increased from 74% to 94.5% and the antenna gain has been increased from 6.81 dBi to 9.43 dBi.