Performance analysis at the off body environment in terms of impedance matching, return loss and VSWR for wearable antenna system on different materials

Abstract

In the increasing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT), Body Area Network (BAN) becomes much more important than before. The applications are vast and vary. This means a wearable antenna will become a necessity. This paper proposes design for a wearable antenna, which is a rectangular microstrip patch antenna. The focus of this paper is to design the microstrip antenna with textile materials as the substrate such as panama, cotton and silk. For comparable reason, the FR-4 substrate which is a popular substrate for constructing microstrip patch antenna is used as a comparison. The parameters observed in this paper are the return loss, VSWR and input impedance of each materials. After performing the simulation process using AWR Microwave Office, we can conclude that the substrates which used textile fabrics are acceptable and meet the minimum criteria for Body Area Network at working frequency of 2.45 GHz. The result of return loss, VSWR and input impedance show acceptable compare to FR-4. This study is usefull for BAN application in order to achieve wearable microstrip antenna with compact dimension .