Vol. 51, Issue 2, pp. 159-170

Abstract

A flexible and compact coplanar waveguide feed (CPW-fed) wearable antenna is introduced for wireless wearable communications applications at the industrial scientific medical (ISM) band. The proposed antenna consists of copper, which is used as the radiation patch and ground planes printed on the same side of polyimide flexible substrate. The overall size of the antenna is 30 mm × 28 mm × 0.08 mm, the results show that the antenna can transmit and receive signals in two frequency bands of 1.89–2.67 GHz and 3.02–3.23 GHz, in which radiating properties are characterized and agree well with the simulation results. The antenna is bent in different directions to further investigate the reflection coefficient and corresponding effect on the antenna under bending. The center frequency of the antenna is slightly shifted towards higher and lower frequencies when antenna is bent in X-axis and Y-axis, respectively. Furthermore, the wearability of the antenna is verified when the antenna is placed on different parts of the human body such as wrist and chest. Hence, the proposed flexible antenna is a suitable candidate for wearable wireless communication applications.