Wearable Inkjet-Printed Wideband Antenna by Using Miniaturized AMC for Sub-GHz Applications

A novel compact wearable antenna printed on paper is presented. The antenna comprises a nonresonant coplanar monopole antenna placed on a miniaturized artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) (total size of 0.14 λ0 × 0.14 λ0 × 0.01 λ0 at 700 MHz). The manufacturing process only requires a commercial desktop inkjet printer and conductive nano-ink. The effectiveness of the proposed configuration (monopole above AMC) with respect to the unloaded monopole or to the monopole above a metallic ground plane is proved with on-body measurements in the sub-GHz band.