A Foam-Based Compact Flexible Wideband Antenna for Healthcare Applications

Abstract

In recent times, the study of flexible wireless devices has attracted ample attention in the fields of biomedicine and healthcare. Biomedical systems are becoming more popular and employed to find harmful elements within human bodies. A portable biomedical device makes use of a contacting or non-contacting way to find tumours inside the human body. In view of this, a compact two-slot hexagonal shape flexible wideband microstrip antenna for healthcare application is presented. The proposed antenna is designed using a low-cost, light-weight, and broadly accessible flexible foam material. The slots incorporated into the geometry have enriched the percentage bandwidth of 106.67% with a total gain of 4.67 dBi. The flexible wideband antenna of dimension 28 ×26 × 2 mm3 is fabricated using copper foil. The designed and fabricated antenna operates over the frequency of 2.94 to 9.66 GHz resulting in three different resonating frequencies; 3.8 GHz, 6.7 GHz, and 9.1 GHz. The flexible antenna is tested under different bending conditions and obtains good performance to substantiate flexibility. The Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) analysis is also performed over a three-layer tissue equivalent body model and observes a maximum SAR value of 1.9 W/kg less than the safety limit of 2 W/kg for 10 gm of tissue. A good agreement is observed between the simulated and measured results of the proposed antenna for free space and human proximity.