Performance Analysis of Textile Antennas for Body Worn Application

This paper presents conventional shaped (rectangular elliptical, and circular) textile antennas performance and SAR analysis with and without human body tissue model (HBTM) at 2.45 GHz. The antenna design involved a coaxial probe feeding technique and fabric substrates (wash cotton, curtain cotton, and polycot) of 3 mm thickness. At 2.45 GHz WLAN band, both for OFF body and ON body, circular antenna with curtain cotton presents an overall superior performance in terms of return loss (−60.9995 dB and −52.423 dB), VSWR (1.0018 and 1.0048), peak directivity (8.969 dBi and 8.825 dBi), gain (7.391 dBi and 7.109 dBi), and radiation efficiency (69.81% and 68.07%) maintaining a bandwidth (BW) of 108.2 MHz and 107.4 MHz at −10dB. The antennas are also analyzed in close proximity (2 mm away) to a three-layered (skin, fat, and muscle) flat body phantom to determine the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The SAR recorded for circular MPA (curtain cotton) is 0.0293 W/kg< 2 W/kg averaged over 10g tissue. The overall simulation is done using CST Microwave Studio software. The proposed antenna is considered to be an effective antenna for on body wireless communication.