Performance of a textile magneto-electric dipole operating in the vicinity of the human body

Abstract

A low profile dual-band antenna based on the magneto-electric dipole concept is investigated on-body. An efficient space-utilization configuration of the conductive textiles and substrate layers ensured the compactness of the structure for on-body application. The two U slots in the dipole combine the electric and magnetic resonances to produce a dual band behavior and wideband characteristic in each band, as validated via simulations and measurements. Low backward radiations in both the lower and the upper bands are observed, rendering it insensitive to the coupling to the human body. To validate this, the antenna is first simulated in a bent configuration using a simplified, cylindrically-shaped human phantom and was found to be robust. It was then simulated on a detailed voxel model to assess its bent performance. Besides the slightly degraded reflection performance, the studied specific absorption rate (SAR) is proven to be well below the European limit of 2 W/kg. Index Terms-Textile antenna, dual-band antenna, magnetoelectric dipole antenna.I.