An armband-wearable printed antenna with a full ground plane for body area networks

This paper presents a printed antenna with a full ground plane, suitable for wearable armbands and other such body area network devices operating in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band (2.45 GHz). Performance and characteristics are presented along with parametric analyses. Antenna performance is investigated under conformal bending over human arm to assess its suitability for armband-type body centric wireless communication devices. The full ground plane makes the antenna performance highly insensitive to the gap between the antenna and the arm. It also reduces electromagnetic radiation absorption in the arm. The proposed antenna exhibits a wide radiation pattern along the body surface to provide better coverage and its narrow width (14mm) makes it suitable for wearable on-body applications.