Miniaturized Wearable Antennas using Resonant Current Path Length Manipulation

This paper proposes a simple manipulation of the resonant current path length as a tool to miniaturize a microstrip-based wearable antenna. The operating frequency of the antenna is governed by the resonant current path length. As such, by electrically increasing the resonant current path length without changing the antenna size, the resonance frequency can be effectively decreased. The work demonstrates the introduction of two L-shape slots with total length of 10 mm to miniaturize a square microstrip antenna operating at 7.9 GHz. These slots electrically increase the resonant current path length by additional 20 mm, which decreases the resonance frequency by 2.1 GHz offering an antenna miniaturization of 27%.