Bandwidth Enhancement of an Implantable Antenna

An antenna with bandwidth enhancement is proposed for ingestible capsule systems at the Medical Device Radiocommunications Service (MedRadio, 401-406 MHz) band. The antenna is first designed and optimized in planar form on Rogers 3010 to validate the feasibility of the wideband performance. By introducing a strip connected to a simple dipole, a new resonance is introduced besides its fundamental resonance. Thus, bandwidth enhancement can be achieved, and the simulated bandwidth of the proposed antenna after optimization increases from 25.7% to 37.8% compared to the antenna without the strip. To verify the wide bandwidth performance, measurement is carried out, and the result turns out that wideband performance of the proposed configuration can be achieved. Moreover, the configuration is reoptimized on the surface wall of a capsule in a conformal form to achieve a bandwidth enhancement from 18.9% to 36.1%.