Design of textile capsule-shaped patch antenna for WBAN applications

Abstract

This paper presents the design of the capsule-shaped patch antenna applied on fabric substrate for WBAN applications at 2.45GHz ISM band. The antenna uses Pure Copper Polyester Taffeta Fabric as a conductive substrate for ground and radiator layers, and denim as dielectric substrate. Normally, a basic rectangular antenna has a narrow bandwidth. This paper proposes the new design combining a rectangular shape with a half circular shape at both end, called the capsule-shaped antenna. The other purpose of this research is to design the antenna that can be directly installed on cloth for a WBAN small sensor. The parameters used for the analysis rely on resonance frequency. The operation frequency can be analyzed based on the reflection coefficients; it is obtained from simulation results. The antenna prototypes have been built and measured. The impedance bandwidth of prototype antenna at 10 dB with a value of 11.95% compared with 7.34% of the simulation, centered at 2.45GHz. It was found that the antenna gain from simulation and measurement was 5.63dB and 3.53dB, respectively. Finally, the radiation pattern of capsule-shaped antenna was verified by the measurement results.