Design of Flexible Meander Line Antenna for Healthcare for Wireless Medical Body Area Networks
This work addresses the need for wearable antennas for on- and off-body healthcare monitoring, representing an incremental improvement in antenna design for specific medical applications.
The paper tackled the design of a flexible meander line antenna for healthcare applications in wireless medical body area networks, achieving bandwidths up to 1282.4 MHz and gains up to 4.85 dBi, with a coverage range of up to 11 meters in experimental measurements.
A flexible meander line monopole antenna (MMA) is presented in this paper. The antenna can be worn for on-and off-body applications. The overall dimension of the MMA is 37 mm x 50 mm x2.37 mm3. The MMA was manufactured and measured, and the results matched with simulation results. The MMA design shows a bandwidth of up to 1282.4 (450.5) MHz and provides gains of 3.03 (4.85) dBi in the lower and upper operating bands, respectively, showing omnidirectional radiation patterns in free space. While worn on the chest or arm, bandwidths as high as 688.9 (500.9) MHz and 1261.7 (524.2) MHz, and the gains of 3.80 (4.67) dBi and 3.00 (4.55) dBi were observed. The experimental measurements of the read range confirmed the results of the coverage range of up to 11 meters.