All-Textile On-Body Metasurface Antenna

Abstract

In this work, a novel all-textile washable metasurface antenna is designed for WBAN/WLAN and mid-band 5G applications. Metasurface antenna is obtained by implanting SRR (Split Ring Resonator) metamaterials that show left-hand characteristics to the patch plane. The metamaterial arrays consisting of 4 x 1 and 4 x 2 SRRs are placed to lateral sides of a circular patch. The performance of the antenna is verified by a full-wave electromagnetic analysis tool. The results show that metamaterial arrays significantly increase gain and efficiency values of the circular patch antenna. Metasurface antenna consisting of 4 x 2 array of metamaterials increases the efficiency from 74% to 94.5% and the antenna gain from 6.81 dBi to 9.43 dBi. Performance of the antenna is observed on conformal surfaces, as well. An analysis is carried out to calculate the peak specific absorption rate on an arm phantom. Patterns of vertically bended antenna in circle divide =0 degrees and 90 degrees planes and low SAR values up to 30dBm input power proved suitability of the metasurface antennas for on-body applications. The antennas are fabricated by using standard textile manufacturing techniques. It was confirmed by the measurement results that the metasurface formed by the linear SRR arrays increases the antenna gain. With its low cost, fabrication with standard off-the-shelf parts, high gain, and efficiency features, the proposed antenna can be used in wireless body area networks and 5G applications.