The increasing usage of wireless technology has prompted the development of a new generation antenna compatible with the latest devices, with on-body antennas (wearable antennas) being one of the revolutionary applications. This modern design is relevant in technologies that require close human body contact, such as telemedicine and identification systems, due to its superior performance compared to normal antennas. Some of its finer characteristics include flexibility, reflection coefficient, bandwidth, directivity, gain, radiation, specific absorption rate (SAR), and efficiency that are anticipated to be influenced by the coupling and absorption by the human body tissues. Furthermore, improvements like band-gap structure and artificial magnetic conductors (AMC) and (DGS) are included in the wearable antenna that offers a high degree of isolation from the human body and significantly reduces SAR. In this paper, the development of on-body antennas and how they are affected by the human body were reviewed. Additionally, parameters that affect the performance of this new antenna model, such as materials and common technologies, are included as an auxiliary study for researchers to determine the factors affecting the performance of the wearable antenna and the access to a highly efficient antenna.

This study proposed a 20 mm x 30 mm x 1 mm wearable antenna constructed of fabric (felt) substrate, making it the most suitable candidate for wearable applications, and fit for embedding in cloths for use in telemedicine applications. In addition, an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) array comprised of 6 square copper loops attached to a fabric substrate (jeans) with a slotted ground structure was proposed. The proposed antenna design combined with the EBG array had a total dimension of 60 mm x 60 mm x 2 mm and operated at 2.4 GHz with low specific absorption rate (SAR) of 1.55 watts per kilogram (W/kg) and 0.77 W/kg per 10 g. The simulation and measurement results indicated that the antenna performed better when coupled with the 6-cells EBG array constructed on a substrate different from that of the antenna and featuring slots on the EBG partial ground. This new approach of using a different substrate for the antenna and EBG array significantly increased the antenna’s bandwidth from 7.5% to 25 %, that can overcome the problem of frequency shifting and reduced the negative effect of the human body on the performance of the antenna. Furthermore, the partial slotted EBG ground increased the antenna gain from 1.4 dBi to 6.7 dBi. Additionally, the antenna’s performance was measured on a real human body arm. The measurement results showed a good agreement with the simulation results, making the proposed design reliable for wearable telemedicine applications.