Multiband Flexible Ultra-Wideband Antenna for Wearable Electronics and Biomedical Applications

Abstract

This article proposes a flexible ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna for wearable electronics and biomedical applications. The antenna presented for this work is fabricated on a Kapton polyimide (PI) substrate, and the operating frequency ranges from 2.4 GHz to 7.1 GHz. The footprint of the proposed antenna is 35 × 45 mm with an elliptical radiating element fed by coplanar waveguide (CPW), which achieves improved impedance matching characteristics. The choice of substrate, design constraints, fabrication process, and bending test of the proposed flexible UWB antenna are explained in detail in this paper. A comparative study on the choice of substrate is performed and the Kapton PI is chosen as the substrate material, which makes the antenna less susceptible to degradation in antenna performance that arises due to bending effects. The measurement and simulated results of the fabricated antenna show a good degree of agreement. The return loss performance of the proposed antenna is greater than -10 dB in all the operating bands with improved gain and directivity. The flexible nature with multiple frequency bands of operation and good bending performance makes the proposed antenna appropriate for wearable electronic and biomedical applications.