Design of an Ultra Wide Band (UWB) Antenna and its Performance Analysis at the on and off Body Environment

Abstract

Design of a U-slotted circular patch Ultra Wide Band (UWB) antenna on Jeans substrate which can be easily worn is presented in this paper, and then imposed on human body environment for Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) applications. Comparison of the performance of the designed antenna is done at the on and off body environment in terms of return loss, radiation pattern and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR). The antenna provides an operational frequency band from 6.6342 GHz to 16.58 GHz, but for analyzing the performance 7-14 GHz frequency band is used. Electro textile material, Denim jeans (ε_r= 1.7) is used as the antenna substrate. A human body model having three layers (skin, fat and muscle) is then developed and the antenna is applied on this body model to investigate the characteristics and performance and also the impact of human body layers on the antenna. The whole observation on human body model is carried out at four different frequencies: 8 GHz, 10 GHz, 12 GHz and 14 GHz.