Robust On-Body Antenna Based on Discretized Planar Surfaces

This paper presents a novel on-body antenna consisting of discretized metallic patch elements connected with lumped components. The antenna is designed to on-body application, and it could be placed, e.g., to the sling of the backpack. Since most of the human body is composed of water, it has a significant effect on antenna performance. The main effects include detuning of the antenna and a deteriorating radiation efficiency. The proposed antenna inherently resists the detuning effects as compared to a conventional antenna. Therefore, the antenna provides a robust operation in various user scenarios. The details of the structure and element values are optimized with a readily available method that enables the optimization of lumped components to improve the total efficiency. The results show that a 400 MHz bandwidth can be achieved with reasonable efficiency.