Parametric Study of Wearable Antennas with Varying Distances from the Body and Different On-Body Positions

The concept of being connected anywhere and everywhere and also the constant monitoring of human health and behaviour in various environments are the main drivers for developing and researching potential wireless sensor network applications. The paper presents the investigation and analysis performed to highlight the main characteristics of body-worn antennas and on-body communication. Antennas studied included planar conventional dipole and monopoles and modified and miniaturised printed structures. Numerical modelling techniques were applied as the main investigation method enabling efficient and convenient means of extracting and analysing the desired results and data. Effect of different body locations on the wearable antenna performance is highlighted by means of experimental investigations, in addition to on-body propagation measurement which resulted in path loss values in good agreement with simulation.