A Novel Flexible Antenna at Very High Frequency Band for On-Body Applications

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel flexible antenna design operating at very high frequency (VHF) band for on-body applications such as human body communication (HBC). The antenna consists of back-to-back E-shaped fractal and complimentary structures designed over a thin flexible substrate. The overall design working on the principle of fractal geometries and capacitive coupling is highly beneficial to achieve better antenna characteristics even at low frequencies around 35 MHz–45 MHz that are being used for HBC application. The proposed antenna obtained a large bandwidth of around 10.0 MHz in air and a bandwidth of around 8.0 MHz during on-body operation. The antenna has been tested in three different scenarios viz. air, on-body single antenna and on-body communication using two antennas. The insertion loss is reduced to a minimum in all three scenarios, which is quite beneficial for better signal transmission. The size miniaturization with high flexibility in such low frequencies has also been achieved in the paper that makes the proposed design suitable for human body communication applications.

Keywords

antenna / very high frequency (VHF) / human body communication (HBC) / bandwidth / loss / flexible