Comparative exploration of diverse substrate materials on performance of ultra wide band antenna design for on body WBAN applications

Abstract

The design and development of a small-sized, high gain ultra wide band (UWB) antenna based on different substrate materials are presented for on body wireless body area net- work (WBAN) applications. In the present scenario, on-body wearable antennas wave propagation and radiation pattern characteristics have been rigorously explored for study along with the growth of wireless body area networks. The major focus of the presented work is to perform comparative analysis of different substrate materials on performance of a novel, small sized, high gain UWB antenna design suitable for on body WBAN applica- tions. The comparative investigation of the effect of different substrates materials i.e. FR4, Jeans, Rubber, Fleece, Polyester and Rogers RT 5880 on the designed antenna performance for has been performed. The FR4 substrate material found to optimum for proposed UWB antenna that has an overall measurement of 30 mm × 35 mm × 1.2 mm, possesses a large impedance bandwidth of 119.3%, and exhibits high gain and directivity. The peak meas- ured gain and directivity are realized as 6.0 dB and 6.739 dBi respectively at 11.1 GHz. The performance parameters results of designed and fabricated antenna have been inves- tigated and found to be in good compliance. The simulation and evaluation outcomes of the fabricated antenna demonstrate the suitability of the presented FR4 based antenna for WBAN utilization to be operable for communication in the UWB band.