Design of a Textile AMC-backed Antenna for Wearable Applications

This paper presents a new wearable antenna designed for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) applications operating at 5.8 GHz using textile materials. To improve the antenna performance and protect the human body from radiation an Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) structure was used. The AMC-integrated antenna was low profile and had much-reduced dimensions. To study the effects of the human body on the performance of the developed antenna, we conducted different simulations with and without AMC using a rectangular multi-layer human body model. The proposed AMC antenna provided interesting simulation and measurement results in free space and on the human body, and the specific absorption rate (SAR) values are also under the IEEE guidelines that guarantee the safety of the wearer.