Body worn antenna system for health care related on- and off-body communications

This paper presents an antenna concept which is focused on an optimized performance for on-body communications using the 5 GHz ISM band. Primary design parameters are a strong normal polarization and a low effective antenna height. In addition, the antenna concept is capable to use the 2.7 GHz E-UTRA band for off-body uplinks. In this context, the underlying on-body channel properties are discussed to deduce design aspects which result in optimized propagation properties. Based here on, a numerical method is used to calculate the antenna on-body radiation characteristic to determine a model of the on-body path gain. The related results show a good agreement with a numerical calculated path gain along a realistic full human body model.