Gain Enhancement of Compact AMC-Dual-Band Antenna for WBAN Applications

In this paper, a compact dual-band antenna system is designed for wireless body area network (WBAN) devices. The design is based on a CPW-fed slot antenna operating at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. To reduce the backward scattering wave towards the human body, a compact double square based on a
$4\times 3$
artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) array is proposed. The volume of the proposed antenna with AMC is
$54\times 72\times 15\ \text{mm}^{3}$
. Simulated results show that the AMC surface can enhance the isolation of the back radiation from the antenna to the human body. Furthermore, results demonstrate that the proposed AMC integrated antenna has also a significant increase in gain of 7 dBi and 9.54 dBi, and the front-to-back ratio of 13.4 dB and 20.1 dB, at 2.4 GHz and 5.5 GHz, respectively, when placed on the phantom. These demonstrated properties of the proposed antenna make it an ideal candidate for WBAN applications.