A novel planar antenna for wireless body area network

A novel planar antenna for wireless medical telemetry service is presented. It can be placed on the human body tissue with good antenna gain. This design is via-free and the half-wavelength patch mode of the antenna can be excited with a special feeding scheme. For different applications, the antenna can be used as a stand-alone antenna when it is fed by a coaxial cable, or to be integrated with a single chip sensor where the chip can be placed at the center of the antenna. Antenna parameters such as return loss and radiation patterns are also evaluated to validate the proposed design. Its characteristics of vialess, compact, and planar makes it a good candidate for wireless body area network applications.