Comparison of performance of compact ring printed monopole and loop antennas for wireless‐implantable body area network applications

Abstract

Human bodies have a variety of tissues and organs, and so it needs to be characterized as a radio‐wave propagation medium to create a reliable wireless communication link. The radiation characteristics of printed monopole antenna and printed loop antenna for wireless‐implantable body area network (WiBAN) applications are presented in this article. The two antennas are submerged into canola oil to mimic an implanted antenna in the human tissue. The tissue is considered a lossy environment and hence, it adversely degrades radiation characteristics of both antennas. Therefore, the RF transmission attenuation, dB can be used for characterizing the propagating wave from the submerged antennas to the free‐air surface. The measured results show satisfactory performance and are in good agreement with the simulation. As indicated in the results, the attenuation rate from a lossy environment to the free space for the printed loop antenna (0.1 dB/mm) is smaller compared to that of printed monopole antenna (0.1–0.3 dB/mm). More so, the printed loop antenna is smaller in size (about 56%) compared to the printed monopole antenna, which suggests that the loop antenna is more suitable than the monopole for the WiBAN applications. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1270–1274, 2014