M.Sc. Thesis.

Antenna Design
for
On-the-body Sensors
Ying Cui
Feb 2006
MIC - Department of Micro and Nanotechnology
Technical University of Denmark
Abstract
This thesis describes the design, simulation, implementation, testing and
characterization of several antennas to be used in on-the-body sensors. On-
the-body sensors are a promising component in Wireless Body Sensor Net-
works (WBSN), which have recently gained wider attention in the medi-
cal and health-care sector as they help the medical personnel access a pa-
tients health status at any time wherever he or she may be. The antennas
will provide the wireless communication links between nodes in the WBSN.
The wireless nature of the network increases the exibility and mobility of
a subject wearing them. Due to the novelty of this type of network, the
antennas designed in this thesis have been purposefully optimized for sim-
ple, transmit-only functioning. The antennas operating frequency was se-
lected to be 869MHz for European implementations and 915MHz for North
American ones based on the regulations on Short Range Devices (SRD) in
biotelemetry and the radio frequency allocations in these two regions.
Two implementation concepts were considered, PCB and Flex, each im-
posing dierent dimension constraints: 10 20 3mm and 30 30 0.2
0.3mm, respectively. In order to meet these space requirements, only planar
antennas were considered. Within the family of planar antennas two sub-
types, the patch and printed loop antennas, were selected for further study
due to their amenability to WSBNs. These antennas were characterized by
numerical estimation and computer simulation using dierent congurations
and feeding methods. Afterwards, four designs were selected and sent for
manufacturing on PCB with a ground plane (PCB-A) and without (PCB-B),
and on Flex materials with a ground plane (Flex-A) and without (Flex-B).
Since the Flexprint is normally ordered in large quantities, the antennas in
the Flex designs were actually printed on a very thin PCB.
The antennas were assembled with coaxial cables and SMA connectors to
measure the 1-Port S
11
parameter in the frequency range 400MHz 2GHz
with a network analyzer. To this point, measurements have been made on
ii
three antennas: (1) the 1020mm PCB-B rectangular loop antenna; (2) the
30 30mm Flex-A ring microstrip antenna; and (3) the 30 30mm Flex-B
circular loop antenna. Each antenna was tested in three scenarios: Case 1,
the bare antenna; Case 2, the antenna in parallel with the resonance capac-
itor; Case 3, the antenna with the capacitor covered by a piece of adhesives
and placed on the human wrist. The tuned Flex-B circular loop antenna had
the best performance of the the three with a return loss of 20dB , a re-
ection coecient of 0.1 and a VSWR of 1.22 at 869MHz. The human body
decreased the return loss by 5dB and lowered the resonance frequency by
30MHz for all antenna types.
iii
Preface
This thesis was carried out at the Department of Micro and Nanotechnology,
MIC, at the Technical University of Denmark, DTU. The project Antenna
Design for On-the-body Sensors weights 35 ECTS-credit points towards the
obtainment of an international Master of Science degree in Electronics. The
project has been supervised by lector Erik V. Thomsen. It was conducted
from May 16, 2005 to February, 2006 in the MEMS-AppliedSensors group
and in collaboration with the company Delta.
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge Erik V. Thomsen and Karsten Hoppe (Delta)
for their help and inspiration. Moreover, I would like to thank Erik Bech for
his help with the antenna measurements in the High Frequency Laboratory
at Delta. Also a thanks goes to the whole MEMS-Applied Sensors group for
their support. I greatly appreciate the comments from Karen Birkelund and
Philippe-Joseph Arida on the thesis. I would also like to thank my friends
for their help and company throughout my masters program. Finally, my
parents deserve all my gratitude for their endless love and support, as none
of this would ever happen without them.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Thesis overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Antennas 5
2.1 The operating frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.1 The available frequency bands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.2 The selected frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2 Antenna characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.1 The transmitting antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.2 Field regions of antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.3 Fundamental parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3 Types of antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.1 Wire antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.2 Aperture antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.3 Array antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.4 Reector antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.5 Lens antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.6 Microstrip patch antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4 Antennas and the human Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.1 Models of basic wire antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.2 Results and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 Antenna Designs 31
3.1 Design conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2 Microstrip patch antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.1 Microstrip patch antenna characteristics . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.2 Design procedure of the rectangular patch antenna . . 35
3.2.3 Characteristics simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
vi
3.3 Loop antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3.1 Small loop antenna characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.2 Design Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.3 Characteristics simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4 The designs selected for manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.4.1 PCB-A antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4.2 PCB-B antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.4.3 Flex-A antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.4.4 Flex-B antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4 Experimental Work and Result Analysis 56
4.1 S
11
realization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.2 Experimental procedures of the 1-Port S
11
measurement . . . 59
4.2.1 Preparation of the Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2.2 Calibration of the Network Analyzer . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.2.3 S
11
Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3 Experiment results analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.3.1 The PCB-B rectangular loop antenna . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.3.2 The Flex-A ring microstrip antenna . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.3.3 The Flex-B circular loop antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5 Conclusions and Future work 76
5.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.2 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
A Simulation plots 84
vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
The antenna designs for on-the-body sensors project was researched and
developed in collaboration with the company DELTA. It nds its origins
in DELTAs bigger project wireless microsensors for medical applications,
and is the rst step in designing and implementing antennas for wireless mi-
crosensors which will be used in Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSN).
This chapter contains the motivation for the project as well as an overview
of the thesis. The concept of WBSN is shown in Figure 1.1. Sensors attached
to human body, are interconnected via a wireless network making them nodes
in an internet network. The transmitted data can be controlled/stored in a
monitoring unit, from where data can be easily downloaded on any network
end device, such as computer, cellphone or disk.
1.1 Motivation
The demand for wireless on-the-body communications is rapidly increasing
due to the revolution in wearable systems demonstrated by the penetra-
tion of on-the-body sensors in hospitals, sports medicine and general health-
care practices. Whereas conventional wearable systems are interconnected
by wires that restrict a subjects movements, wireless sensors will relay the
same physiological data to a network while giving greater exibility and mo-
bility to users. The antenna is an essential component of building wireless
communication links. Antennas used in this kind of applications require a
1
Figure 1.1: Concept of the Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSN). In this WBSN, the
sensor nodes placed on/in the human body communicates with the monitoring unit, which
stores and transmits diagnostic information to the outside through computers, cellphones
or disks.
low-prole, compact size, tolerable power consumption, low manufacturing
cost and must have little eects on the human body. In this project, we will
develop antennas for on-the-body sensors with these properties.
On-the-body sensors are usually applied to monitoring various physiolog-
ical parameters in biomedical applications. These sensors are either placed
outside or implanted inside the human body. The type of antenna used in the
sensors depends on the sensors location. Here we consider sensors located
on the surface of the human skin. The specications are listed below.
Dimensions. Two types of antennas were considered in this project
(Section 3.4).
Type I : The antenna is printed on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
and integrated with all other electronic components in the mi-
crosensor. The package size is 10203 mm.
2
Type II: The antenna is printed on a exible material, separated
from all other electronic components and attached to the adhe-
sives, which serves as the top cover of the microsensor. Size:
30300.20.3mm.
Frequency Band. The frequency band was selected based on the
European regulation for Biomedical Telemetry applications. The an-
tennas in this project were designed to operate at 869MHz (Section
2.1).
Radiation Range. The function of the antennas is to build the com-
munication links within the body monitoring network. Hence, the ra-
diation range should be approximately from 15cm to 3m.
Radiation Power. The maximum eective radiated power of the
antenna should be limited to avoid damage to the neighboring radio
services and human bodies.
Power consumption. The antennas will be powered by an internal
battery in the microsensor package. The power distribution should be
decided at a system point of view, which is not in the scope of this
thesis. However, the designs were selected with the goal of keeping the
antenna as ecient as possible to save the battery life.
Distance to the body. The antennas are separated from the human
body by other components of the microsensor. The distance from the
antenna to the body is varied in dierent antenna types. If the distance
is small enough, the interaction between the antenna and the human
body should be taken into consideration (Refer to Section 2.4).
The critical parameter at this stage is the size of the antenna. The an-
tenna, as an electronic component, is normally integrated with other elec-
tronics in the sensor, as the Type I PCB design. However, since the space
reserved for the antenna is very limited, the Type II Flex design was consid-
ered in order to enlarge the area for the antenna and increase the antenna
Gain (G A, refer to 2.2.3), which at the same time kept the antenna fur-
ther away from the human body and saved space for other electronics on
3
the PCB. Due to the thickness constraint in the specications, the pattern
of the antenna must be thin and at. Therefore we focus on antennas with
planar structures in this project, while the antennas are designed to match
the DELTAs specications for on-the-body sensors, they are also promising
candidate antennas for other Wireless Body Sensor Networks.
1.2 Thesis overview
In Chapter 2, the selection of the antenna operating frequency is reasoned
based on research of the radio-communication regulations and the industrial,
scientic, and medical (ISM) frequency bands allocation. Fundamentals of
antenna design and characterization follow to give an idea of what types of
antenna to consider and how to design them. Finally, the eects of the hu-
man body on antenna performances are discussed.
Microstrip patch and loop antennas are characterized in Chapter 3. The
concept of microstrip patch antennas is widely used in antenna inventions.
Loop antennas are normally considered for electrical small antennas. The de-
sign procedures of these two kinds of antennas are given following the design
specications laid out in Chapter 2. All the designs are based on the design
specications. The bests of each kind are nally presented and selected for
manufacturing for both the PCB and the Flex designs.
In Chapter 4, the performance of the antennas is tested with the 1-Port
(S11) measurement. The experimental results are analyzed and compared.
To conclude, in Chapter 5, the investigation results of this thesis are
summarized and possible future work is proposed.
4
Chapter 2
Antennas
In the Introduction, it is mentioned that a specic frequency was selected for
the antenna designs. A review on the radiocommunication frequency band
will be given in this chapter to explain the selection. The parameters for
antenna characteristics will then be described to make clear how to evaluate
the tness of possible antennas. At the end of the chapter, the interactions
of wireless communication antennas with the human body are studied. The
inuence of the human body on antenna performances is simulated with sev-
eral wire antenna models.
2.1 The operating frequency
Antennas will form the wireless links for sensors worn on the human body.
It is important to consider the potentially hazardous eects associated with
electromagnetic (EM) radiation interaction with human tissue, and medical
radio protocols should be selected with caution, where the frequency band is
an essential factor.
2.1.1 The available frequency bands
Several frequency bands are specially licensed for medical applications. In
order to cutdown costs, many applications are operated in the industrial,
5
scientic, and medical (ISM) bands, where no license is required to operate
a device. Such ISM bands are integral to the general wireless transmission
marketplace and the wireless sensor networking arena.
Due to the limited size of their power supply and the fact that they
operate in and around living tissue, radio ICs must be low powered. Most
low-power ICs operate in the frequency band ranging from 300MHz to 1GHz.
Many licensed and unlicensed frequency bands in this range are available for
medical applications. The frequency spectrum from 9kHz to 1GHz is shown
in Figure 2.1.
The Figure 2.1 is derived from the frequency allocation documents ob-
Figure 2.1: The 9kHz 1GHz Frequency Spectrum, where the 407 668MHz and 902
928MHz frequency bands are available in North America, while the 433.05434, 79MHz
and 868 870MHz frequency bands are available in Europe for our antenna designs. The
402405MHz frequency band is licensed for medical implant communications throughout
the world.
6
tained from the European Radiocommunications Committee (ERC) and the
US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)
[1] [2].
Table 2.1 depicts in more details the common European and North Amer-
ican frequency bands suitable for medical applications. The table was ob-
tained through analysis of regulations on the websites of European Telecom-
munications Standards Institute (ETSI), the Federal Communication Com-
mission (FCC), as well as that of the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU).
Our target frequency should be around where low power medical devices
operate. The 402405MHz frequency band is licensed for medical implants.
The 2.4GHz ISM band has been popular for the last 5 years. A lot of wireless
activities share this spectral space, for example the 802.11 WiFi communica-
tion protocols, HomeRF and Bluetooth. This band not only carries a heavy
data trac but also allows higher radiation power, and it is mostly taken by
mobile communications. We are interested in the remaining two frequency
bands. Consider the case in Europe, they are the 433.05 434, 79MHz and
868 870MHz frequency bands. The comparable frequency spectrum in
North American are 30MHz higher than in Europe. Therefore the anten-
nas will simply need to be tuned higher if the products are for the North
America market.
Frequency Max Rad Power Region Band Regulation
(MHz)
402-405 25 W e.r.p. Europe MICS ETSI 301 839
USA (licensed) FCC 7 CFR 95.601-673
433,05-434,79 10mW/10dBm Europe General ETSI EN 300 220
(unlicensed)
868-870 25mW/14dBm Europe General ETSI EN 300 220
(unlicensed)
902-928 1W/30dBm America 915MHz ISM FCC 15.247
Australia (unlicensed)
2400-2483.5 100mW/20dBm Europe 2.4GHz ISM ETSI EN 300 228
2400-2500 1W/30dBm America (unlicensed) FCC 15.247
Table 2.1: Comparison of 5 ISM frequency bands in worldwide use.
7
2.1.2 The selected frequency
An important determination of the antenna size is wavelength. It is inversely
proportional to the frequency and is calculated from [3]
=
c
f
(2.1)
where c is the velocity of wave (c = 3 10
8
m/s in free space) and f is
the frequency. Expressing frequency in MHz, the wavelength in centimeters
will be

[cm]
=
30000
f
[MHz]
(2.2)
We assume that center frequencies of the 433.05 434, 79MHz and 868
870MHz frequency bands are 434MHz and 869MHz, respectively. Thus the
wavelength is 691mm for 434MHz and 345mm for 869MHz. The antenna
gain is inversely proportional to
2
when the physical size of the antenna is
xed (refer to Equation2.9). The antenna size for our application is at most
30 mm, which is less than /10 in both frequency bands. It indicates that
the frequency corresponding to the smaller wavelength should be the choice.
Therefore, the operating frequency is selected to be 869MHz in Europe, and
915MHz in North America.
2.2 Antenna characteristics
To simplify the design we will consider that sensor nodes in a body sensor
network can serve only as transmitters, and that communication will be with
one central transceiver only. Hence, we will concentrate on characterizing a
transmit antenna at this stage.
8
2.2.1 The transmitting antenna
The transmitting antenna is a device that converts the energy of a guided
wave into the energy of a free space wave, with the radiation power dis-
tributed in a certain pattern in space. The Thevenin equivalent circuit in
Figure 2.2 can be used to analyze the performance of electrically small trans-
mitting antennas, where [6]
R
rad
is the radiation resistance, which is related to the radiated power
as
P
rad
= I
2
A
R
rad
(2.3)
R
L
is the loss resistance, which is related to conduction and dielectric
losses;
X
A
is the antenna reactance, which represents the power stored in the
near eld of the antenna;
The antenna can then be represented by the impedance given by [6]
Z
A
= (R
rad
+R
L
) +jX
A
(2.4)
where j =

1, and Z
A
is also called the antenna input impedance.
Figure 2.2: Transmit antenna RCL equivalent circuit, which consists of the Radiation
resistance R
rad
, the Loss resistance R
L
, and the Antenna reactance X
A
. Z
A
is the antenna
input impedance.
9
2.2.2 Field regions of antennas
The space surrounding an antenna is normally subdivided into three regions:
reactive near eld, radiating near eld and far eld regions, as shown in Fig-
ure 2.3 [3].
1) Reactive near eld region
The reactive near eld region is dened by Balanis [3] as, the portion
of the near eld region immediately surrounding the antenna wherein the
reactive elds predominate. The outer boundary of this region is taken at
the distance R
1
from the antenna surface. For most antennas, R
1
is given by
[3]
R
1
= 0.62
_
D
3

(2.5)
where D is the largest dimension of the antenna, and is the wavelength.
For the very short dipole, or its equivalent radiator like the small current
Figure 2.3: Field regions of an antenna. D is the largest dimension of the antenna.
R
1
= 0.62
_
D
3
/ is the distance between the outer boundary of the reactive near eld
region and the antenna surface. R
2
= 2D/ is the distance between the outer boundary
of the radiating near eld region and the antenna surface.
10
loop antenna, the distance R

1
is [14]
R

1
=

2
(2.6)
2) Radiating near eld region
According to Balanis [3], the radiating near eld is the region of the eld
an antenna between the reactive near eld region and the far eld region,
wherein the radiating elds predominate. In this region, the angular eld dis-
tribution is dependent upon the distance from the antenna. If the maximum
overall dimension of an antenna is very small compared to the wavelength,
this region may not exit. The inner and outer boundaries for this region are
at the distance of R
1
, and R
2
from the antenna surface, respectively, and R
2
is calculated from [3]
R
2
=
2D
2

when D > (2.7)

3) Far eld region
The far eld region is the region of the eld of an antenna where the
angular eld distribution is independent of the distance from the antenna. If
the maximum overall dimension of an antenna is bigger than the wavelength,
the inner boundary of this region is at the distance R
2
from the antenna sur-
face, and the outer boundary at innity.
In this project, the maximum size of the antenna was given by the di-
mension constraints in the design specication (refer to Section 1.1), and
D = 30mm. The wavelength is = 345mm at 869MHz (refer to Equa-
tion (2.2)), which is 10 times bigger than D. Therefore the radiating near
eld region does not exist for the antennas in our design. The crossover dis-
tance between near and far eld regions is taken at the outer boundary of the
reactive near eld region. According to Equation 2.5 and 2.6, it is 5.5mm
for most types of antennas, and 55mm for very short dipole and small
current loop antennas. Our antennas are expected to set up communications
within the range 15cm 3m (refer to Section 1.1). The observation distance
11
should be in the same range, where the minimum distance is much further
than the crossover distance. Hence the antennas should be evaluated with
far eld observation analysis. However, the antennas are used in on-the-body
sensors. It means that they will be placed closer to the human body than
1cm, which is in the near eld region of the short dipole and the small loop
antennas. The eect of the human body on the antennas will be discussed
later in this chapter, in Section 2.4.
2.2.3 Fundamental parameters
The parameters introduced in this section are the most basic parameters in
evaluating the antenna performance. The equations are mainly based on the
Balanis antenna theory book [3].
General items
To simplify the calculations, a rectangular conductor is usually substituted
with a circular structure (Figure 2.4). The equivalent circular radius r is[9]
r = 0.35t + 0.24w (2.8)
where t is the thickness and w is the width of the conductor.
Antenna gain and Directivity
Antenna gain is a measure of the antennas ability to radiate power compared
to a reference antenna, usually a /2 dipole antenna or an isotropic radiator.
The latter is a virtual antenna that radiates equally to all directions (no
directivity). The gain is usually given in dBd when relative to a dipole
Figure 2.4: Spherical coordinate system.
12
antenna, and dBi to an isotropic radiator. The /2 dipole antenna has a
gain of 1.64 (2.15 dBi) relative to an isotropic radiator. The antenna gain
can be calculated as [3]
G
4A

2
(2.9)
where is eciency, A is the physical aperture area and is the wavelength.
The antenna directivity is the ratio of the radiation intensity in a given
direction from the antenna to the radiation intensity averaged over all direc-
tions. [3]
D =
U
U
i
=
4U
P
(2.10)
where D is directivity, U is the radiation intensity of the antenna, U
i
is the
radiation intensity of an isotropic source, and P is the total radiated power.
Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR)
Consider the system as shown in Figure 2.5, maximum power transfer takes
place only if the antenna impedance is matched to the impedance of the
transmission line. That means [18]:
Z
in
= Z

c
(2.11)
The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) is a measure of how well a load
Figure 2.5: Transmission line Thevenin equivalent circuit of a transmitting antenna.
13
is impedance-matched to a source. Its value is given by [18]:
V SWR =
1 +||
1 ||
(2.12)
where is the reection coecient. is dened as the ratio of the reected
wave (with amplitude V
r
) to the incident wave (with amplitude V
i
). As reec-
tion occurs when the transmission line is terminated with a load other than
the characteristic impedance Z
c
, the reection coecient can be calculated
from [18]
=
V
r
V
i
=
Z
in
Z
c
Z
in
+Z
c
(2.13)
Eciency
The eciency describes how much power the antenna radiates, which is de-
ned by [3]
=
R
rad
R
rad
+R
L
(2.14)
For small antennas, the radiation resistance R
rad
is small, so that the e-
ciency will reduce signicantly due to any circuit loss.
Radiation pattern
The radiation pattern is the spatial distribution of a quantity that charac-
terizes the electromagnetic eld generated by an antenna. It is important
to make sure that a null (signal minimum) is not present in the desired
direction of communication, so as to be sure that the signal can be received
in that direction.
Polarization
Antennas in the same communication system should be oriented in the same
way to have the same polarization, making the transmitting signal as strong
as possible.
Q-factor
The Quality factor is considered when the antenna is brought to resonance.
It is dened by [3]
Q =
X
A
R
rad
(2.15)
14
In theory the minimum Q-value for a lossless antenna is [3]
Q =
1
(ka)
3
(2.16)
where a is the radius of a sphere which the antenna can be dened in, and k
is the wave number. k =
2

.
The small antennas have a high Q-value due to the low radiation re-
sistance and the high reactance. In our design however a low Q-factor is
desirable so as to obtain better eciency.
Bandwidth
The maximum bandwidth is calculated from [3]
BW =
16(a)
3

3
(2.17)
Referring to Equation 2.16, BW can be expressed as
BW =
2
Q
(2.18)
which shows that the bandwidth is inversely proportional to Q-factor and
eciency.
Figure 2.6: Plot of VSWR as a function of resonance frequency f
r
and the bandwidth at
the desired VSWR (VSWR wanted).
15
The relationship between the bandwidth and the desired VSWR value
(VSWR wanted) corresponds to the resonance frequency f
r
is shown in Fig-
ure 2.6. The bandwidth ranges from a few Mega Hertz to hundreds of Mega
Hertz depending on the antenna type and the operating frequency band. For
mobile antennas under 900MHz the VSWR is usually 1.5:1, and as a gen-
eral rule of thumb, antennas have a bandwidth of approximately 4% of their
tuned frequency [17].
2.3 Types of antenna
A brief introduction to some forms of basic antenna types is given in this
section, including wire antennas, aperture antennas, array antennas, reec-
tor antennas, lens antennas, and microstrip antennas.
2.3.1 Wire antennas
Straight wire (monopole/dipole), loop, and helix antennas are all members of
this family, as shown in Figure 2.7. There are various shapes in each group.
Loop antennas may take the form of a circle, rectangle, square, ellipse, or
any other conguration.
Wire antennas are easy to make, while their dimensions are commensu-
rable with the wavelength. The wavelength is inversely proportional to the
Figure 2.7: Wire antenna congurations. From left to right, dipole, monopole, circu-
lar/rectangular loop, helix, and spiral.
16
frequency referring to Equation 2.1. Therefore, as the frequency drops to a
lower range, this kind of antennas becomes larger.
Resistance for small monopole, dipole, and loop antennas
The following equations are for designing small antennas with a given wave-
length .
Radiation resistance R
rad
The radiation resistance R
rad
for monopole, dipole, and loop antennas are
calculated from [9]
R
rad,monopole
= 40
_
d

_
2
(2.19)
R
rad,dipole
= 20
_
d

_
2
(2.20)
R
rad,loop
= 20

6
d
4

4
(2.21)
where d is the diameter for circular antenna and length for vertical antenna.
Loss resistance R
L
The DC resistance of a wire is [9]
R
L,DC
=
l
S
(2.22)
where l is the total length of the wire, is the metal conductivity, and S is
the cross-section area.
When conducting AC current, the skin eect will occur as the frequency
increases. The current density varies in the conductor, which keeps constant
at DC current. With the charge carriers moving from the center to the edge
of the conductor, the current density decreases in the center and increased
near the edge. The depth from the surface into the conductor at which the
17
current density drops to 37%(1/e = 0.3679) is called the skin depth, which
is given by [9]
=
1

f
(2.23)
where is the permeability of the material.
The loss resistance will then be [9]
R
L,monopole
=
l
6r
(2.24)
R
L,dipole
=
l
3r
(2.25)
R
L,loop
=
a
r
(2.26)
where l is the total length for vertical antenna, and a is the radius of circular
antenna.
2.3.2 Aperture antennas
Aperture antennas are generally used in aircraft and spacecraft applications.
They have sophisticated forms. Figure 2.8 shows some of them. This kind
of antennas is preferable in the high frequency range up to 20GHz.
2.3.3 Array antennas
Single element antennas may not fulll all the radiation characteristic re-
quirements of an antenna. To obtain the desired pattern, an aggregate of
Figure 2.8: Aperture antenna congurations. From left to right, pyramidal horn, conical
horn, and rectangular waveguide.
18
Figure 2.9: Typical array antennas. From left to right, Yagi-Uda array, Aperture array,
Microstrip patch array, and Slotted-waveguide array.
antennas can be arranged in certain advantageous formations, as shown in
Figure 2.9. For example, the Yagi-Uda is known as the most common kind
of terrestrial TV antenna on the rooftops of houses. It consists of a driven
element (usually a dipole) which is the only elements connected to the trans-
mitter, a reector behind the driven element which is 5% longer than the
driver and prevents radiation o the back of the array, and directors in front
of the driven element which are shorter than the driver and focus the radia-
tion in the forward direction. The Yagi-Uda array antenna normally works
in the 30MHz to 3GHz frequency range [15].
2.3.4 Reector antennas
Reector antennas are used to transmit and receive signals on long distances,
which makes them a candidate for space radar system. This kind of antennas
have very high gain and directivity, and their size is usually very big ( 300m)
as well. Figure 2.10 shows common parabolic reectors, and the less popular
Figure 2.10: Typical reector antennas. From left to right, Parabolic reector with front
feed, Parabolic reector with Cassegrain feed, and Corner reector.
19
Figure 2.11: Typical lens antennas.
corner reectors.
2.3.5 Lens antennas
Lenses can transform divergent energy into plane waves by choosing the
proper shape and materials. This kind of antennas is used in many of the
same applications as reector antennas. They are mostly applied at higher
frequencies. Some of these antennas are shown in gure 2.11[11].
2.3.6 Microstrip patch antennas
Microstrip antennas consist of a metallic patch on a dielectric substrate,
which has a grounded metallic plane at the opposite side, as shown in Fig-
ure 2.12. The patch has great variety of geometries, usually square, rect-
angular, circular, triangular, elliptical or some common shape as shown in
Figure 2.13.
This type of antenna is low-prole and is easily fabricated using modern
printed-circuit technology. They can be mounted on dierent surfaces from
mobile phones to spacecrafts. They are also versatile in terms of resonance
frequency, polarization, radiation pattern, and impedance.
20
Figure 2.12: Rectangular microstrip (patch) and printed dipole antennas.
The major disadvantages of this type of antenna are low eciency, low
power, high Q, poor polarization purity, poor scan performance, spurious
feed radiation and very narrow frequency bandwidth. Methods exist to ex-
tend the eciency and bandwidth of these antennas such as increasing the
height of the substrate.
The most typical substrates have a dielectric constant in range of 2.2

r
12. Thick substrates with low dielectric constant are desirable as they
provide better eciency, larger bandwidth and loosely bound elds for radi-
ation into space. Thin substrates with high dielectric constant are usually
applied in microwave circuitry because of their minimized undesired radia-
tion and coupling, and the smaller sizes of their elements; they are however
less ecient and have relatively smaller bandwidths.
Figure 2.13: Common geometries of patch in microstrip antennas.
21
2.3.7 Summary
The antennas applied in body-worn applications are usually in the categories
of monopole/dipole, loop, and microstrip antennas[24][26][28][30]. In our
project, having narrowed down antenna requirements, the desired antennas
are planar and small. Therefore the types of antenna considered in this
project will be printed wire antennas, and microstrip patch antennas.
2.4 Antennas and the human Body
With the development of mobile phones and other body area wireless ap-
plications, Specic Absorption Rate (SAR) calculations of the human head
when exposed to EM radiation from hand-held devices have been heavily re-
searched. The research interest is in examining the eect of the human body
on these SAR values and their distribution in the human head. When an
antenna is operating at 900MHz, placed more than 4cm from human head,
dierences of up to 53% are observed in SAR values [12]. There is not much
research on the eects on other parts of the human body, or at a closer dis-
tance to the human body. To ll this void of data and get a big picture of the
eects the human body on antennas, in this section we modeled several wire
antennas using software models to simulate the cases of placing the antennas
in freespace as well as directly on the human body.
The interaction between the antennas and the human body consists of two
main research interests: the eect the human body has on the eld strength
of the antennas, and the electromagnetic energy coupled into body tissues.
Here we consider only the inuence from the human body on the antenna
performance.
2.4.1 Models of basic wire antennas
Wire antennas were investigated by building computer models of the an-
tennas and simulating their radiation performances with the goal of under-
22
standing more about antenna characteristics and the eects caused by the
human body on their performance. The simulation was performed using the
EZNEC 4.0 Demo software package [31].
Four types of antennas were modeled: monopole, dipole, square loop,
and square spiral antennas, as shown in Figure 2.14, 2.18, 2.22, and 2.26,
respectively. The dimensions used were 20mm for the monopole and dipole,
and 10 10mm for the squares, respectively. Copper was chosen as the ma-
terial for the wires, and the wire diameter was set to 0.2mm. The operation
frequency was set to 869MHz. The total eld radiation pattern was simu-
lated with and without a ground plane. Two types of ground planes were
applied: a perfect ground, or a ground plane which was built up with pa-
rameters listed in Table 2.2. The later one was used to simulate the human
body eect. As long as a ground plane was applied in the simulation, the
antennas were actually placed 0.2mm above the ground surface.
2.4.2 Results and analysis
Figure 2.14 2.29 shows the total eld distribution for dierent types of
antenna in each situation. The eld pattern of the antennas were all omni-
directional in the horizontal (x-y) plane except the square loop antenna. In
freespace, the horizontal radiation pattern of the square loop antenna had
a 3dB opening with an angle of 90

, and the null is 12.44dB. The value

of the angle and the null is 50

and 5.83dB respectively when a perfect

ground plane is applied. This result can be explained by the reection of the
magnetic eld by the ground plane, causing the loop to pick up some of the
power. In general, the ground plane reected the elds generated by the an-
tennas. Therefore the radiation pattern of the antennas with ground planes
Biological Tissue Permittivity Conductivity
(
r
) (, S/m)
Skin 46.7 0.69
Fat 11.6 0.08
Table 2.2: Electrical data of biological tissues (Skin and Fat) for the ground plane
model[26]
23
were all in the +z space. The human body acted similarly. The polarizations
for all the antennas over the perfect ground plane and the human skin were
shifted by 90

.
The average gains of all the four types of antennas are listed in table 2.3,
and their directivity in table 2.4. The directivity of a typical /2 dipole an-
tenna is 2.15 dBi in free space [9]. Since the dimension of the antennas in this
simulation is quite small compared to the wavelength, their gain is relatively
much smaller than that of the normal antennas. The average gain and the
directivity were 3 30 times less when a perfect ground plane was used than
those in free space, since the antennas were actually short circuited by the
ground plane. The human body had the similar inuence, but the average
gain and the directivity were 10 30dB(or dBi) more than those in the case
of a perfect ground plane.
An antenna optimized for hand-worn applications usually shows a gain
increase of 3 10dB when placed close to the human body compared to
operated in free space [7]. The antenna gain obtained in the simulations did
not agree with this common expectation, because the congurations of the
Antenna Type Average Gain (dB)
Freespace Perfect Ground plane human skin
Monopole -0.65 -40.69 -7.02
Dipole -0.51 -40.66 -6.98
Square Loop -13.43 -65.69 -34.05
Square Spiral -15.31 -62.92 -50.97
Table 2.3: Average Gain for dierent types of antenna.
Antenna Type Directivity (dBi)
Freespace Perfect Ground plane human skin
Monopole 1.12 -31.94 -1.17
Dipole 1.26 -31.91 -1.14
Square Loop -11.69 -59.96 -28.44
Square Spiral -13.68 -55.26 -45.43
Table 2.4: Directivity for dierent types of antenna.
24
antennas were simply satised with the dimension constraints but not opti-
mized for the design specications. In addition, the simulation software is
made for simple wire antennas and has some limitations as described below.
Hence later in this project, a richer and more precise antenna simulation
software package, IE3D, was chosen to model the antennas.
Limitations of the simulation tool EZNEC Demo V4.0
The EZNEC 4.0 Demo is a simplied version of EZNEC 4.0, which models
antennas with wires. This version is limited in the following ways.
1. The wires constructing the antennas are dened by two points which
are connected by a straight line, making it impossible to make perfect circles
or arcs.
2. Wires are divided into segments. The total number of segments are
limited to 20, which shifts the point at which the source and load are set to
feed. This has a big inuence on the antenna gain.
3. The custom ground plane can only consist of two layers. Furthermore
the height of each layer can not be dened. The value of the parameters
building the ground plane was at 402MHz, while the operating frequency
here is 869MHz. From Gabriels study[16], the conductivity of skin and fat
is higher, about 0.9S/m and 0.09S/m. Thus the average gain and directivity
for antennas over a human ground plane will be about 5% lower.
4. No plot for near eld radiation pattern is given in this version.
2.5 Summary
In this chapter, we rst selected the operating frequency for our antenna
design to be 869MHz by using European regulations for SRDs in biometry.
25
The antennas fundamentals were then discussed to identify the important
parameters for characterizing an antenna. The types of the antennas suit-
able for on-the-body sensors were selected to be the microstrip patch anten-
nas and the printed loop antennas out of the six common types of antennas,
since they promised a planar structure required by our dimension constraints.
The chapter was concluded with a study on the eects of the human body
on antenna performances: the human body reected the elds generated by
the antennas. A complete picture of the eect should be taken with practical
implementations. In the next chapter we will discuss in details the microstrip
patch and printed loop antennas.
26
Figure 2.14: Sketch of the monopole antenna.
Figure 2.15: Radiation pattern of monopole antenna in freespace.
Figure 2.16: Radiation pattern of monopole antenna over perfect ground plane.
Figure 2.17: Radiation pattern of monopole antenna over human skin.
27
Figure 2.18: Sketch of the dipole antenna.
Figure 2.19: Radiation pattern of dipole antenna in freespace.
Figure 2.20: Radiation pattern of dipole antenna over perfect ground plane.
Figure 2.21: Radiation pattern of dipole antenna over human skin.
28
Figure 2.22: Sketch of the square loop antenna.
Figure 2.23: Radiation pattern of square loop antenna in freespace.
Figure 2.24: Radiation pattern of square loop over perfect ground plane.
Figure 2.25: Radiation pattern of square loop over human skin.
29
Figure 2.26: Sketch of the square spiral antenna.
Figure 2.27: Radiation pattern of square spiral antenna in freespace.
Figure 2.28: Radiation pattern of square spiral over perfect ground plane.
Figure 2.29: Radiation pattern of square spiral over human skin.
30
Chapter 3
Antenna Designs
In this chapter, the design procedures of microstrip patch and loop anten-
nas are explained and applied to construct specic designs satisfying all the
constraints outlined in Chapter 2. The computer simulation results of these
designs are then presented. Finally, the best designs are selected and sent
for manufacturing.
3.1 Design conditions
The operating frequency of the antenna designs was selected to be 869MHz
(Refer to Section 2.1). Potential microstrip, loop, and spiral antennas for the
two types of designs were considered. As discussed in the Introduction, the
dimension limits for the two types of designs are
The PCB design: The antennas should t in a package box with all the
other components. The package size: 10 20 3mm.
The Flex design: The antennas are separated from all the other elec-
tronic components and laminated on the covering adhesives. Size:
30 30 0.2 0.3mm.
In either case the antennas will be implemented as printed antennas. The
size of the antennas will dier depending on the concept used: a Flex imple-
mentation will be bigger than a PCB implementation of the same antenna
31
types, because the maximum dimension constraint is 30 30mm for Flex
designs and 10 20mm for PCB designs.
3.2 Microstrip patch antennas
A basic microstrip patch antenna consists of a very thin metallic patch above
a dielectric substrate with a ground plane on the opposite side as shown in
Figure 3.1. The patch is the radiating component. It can be fed by a variety
of methods and can have a wide variety of geometries.
3.2.1 Microstrip patch antenna characteristics
The antenna performance of microstrip patch antennas varies with dier-
ent patch congurations and feeding methods. Several analysis methods are
developed to solve dierent models. Here we take the rectangular patch an-
tenna as an example to characterize antennas in this type. The discussion is
mostly based on [3].
Figure 3.1: Basic structure sketch of a microstrip patch antenna, where a W L t
rectangular patch is sitting on a dielectric substrate with a ground plane on the backside.
The dielectric constant of the substrate is
r
, and the thickness is h.
32
Feeding Methods
The feeding methods of microstrip patch antennas are based on many con-
gurations. The most popular ones are the microstrip line, coaxial probe,
aperture coupling and proximity coupling[3]. The rst two feeding concepts
are displayed in Figure 3.2.
In the microstrip line feeding technique, a conductive thin strip is con-
nected directly to the edge of the patch.
In the probe feeding technique, which is also known as coaxial feed, the
inner conductor of the coaxial connector goes through the dielectric
substrate and is soldered to the patch, while the outer conductor is
connected to the ground plane. In this report, the probe feed position
is the center of the left side of the patch geometry if not specied
particularly.
These two feeding methods possess inherent asymmetries which generate
higher order modes, which in turn produce cross-polarized radiation. Non-
contacting coupling feeds are introduced to overcome some of the problem.
The aperture coupling and proximity coupling are shown in Figure 3.3.
Figure 3.2: Feeding concepts of microstrip line feed (left) and probe feed (right) techniques.
33
Figure 3.3: Feed concept of aperture-coupled feed (left) and proximity-coupled feed (right)
techniques.
In aperture coupling, two substrates are separated by a ground plane.
The radiating patch is above the upper substrate, and a microstrip feed
line is created on the bottom side of the lower substrate. The energy
is coupled to the patch through a slot in the ground plane.
Proximity coupling, also called the electromagnetic coupling, is realized
by a feed stub in between the two substrates and no ground plane is
applied. This kind of feed has the largest bandwidth of the four dierent
feeding methods. It is easy to model and has a low spurious radiation.
Since in our design the antennas have a simple one layer structure, the
aperture-coupled feed and proximity-coupled feed techniques are not suit-
able. Therefore the focus will be on the microstrip-line feed and probe feed
techniques, which are compared in the Characteristics Simulation Section in
order to nd the optional feeding method for our antennas.
Methods of Analysis
There exist many methods of analysis for microstrip patch antennas. The
most popular ones are the transmission line model, cavity model, and full
wave model[3]. The easiest model to use is the transmission line model, which
34
gives good physical insight but is less accurate and makes it more dicult
to model the coupling. The cavity model is more accurate but also more
complex than the transmission line model. It also gives good physical insight
but again, modeling the coupling is rather dicult. The full wave model is
very accurate and versatile if applied properly. It can treat single elements,
nite and innite arrays, stacked elements, arbitrary shaped elements, and
coupling. However, it is also the most complex method and gives less physi-
cal insight.
In this thesis, the transmission line model was used for the numerical
estimation for its ease of analysis. The rectangular patch is the most widely
used conguration, therefore we started the initial design with a rectangular
microstrip patch antenna.
3.2.2 Design procedure of the rectangular patch an-
tenna
In the transmission line model, the microstrip antenna is represented by two
slots, each of width W and height h, separated by a low-impedance Z
c
trans-
mission line. The antenna design model is sketched in Figure 3.4.
The design procedure for a rectangular patch antenna on a known sub-
strate, which has the dielectric constant of
r
and thickness of h, for a given
resonance frequency f
r
is summarized in the following calculation. Four steps
are performed to nd the dimension of the patch.
Step 1: Calculation of patch width W. The width of the patch is
given by the equation [4]
W =
1
2f
r

0
_
2

r
+ 1
=
c
2f
r
_
2

r
+ 1
(3.1)
Step 2: Calculation of eective dielectric constant
reff
. The eective
dielectric constant is given by [3]
35
Figure 3.4: A microstrip line feeded microstrip antenna, with a patch of length L, width
W resting on a substrate of height h.

reff
=

r
+ 1
2
+

r
1
2
_
1 + 12
h
W
_

1
2
for
W
h
> 1 (3.2)
Step 3: Calculation of the extension of the patch length due to
fringing eect L. When the antenna is radiating, an electric eld is
generated between the patch and the ground plane. When
W
h
1 and

r
1, most of the electric eld lines reside in the substrate while parts
of some lines exist in the air. In this case fringing makes the patch wider
electrically than its physical dimensions. The length of the patch is extended
on each end by a distance L. The length extension is given empirically by
[5]
L = 0, 412h
(
reff
+ 0, 3)
(
reff
0, 258)
_
W
h
+ 0, 264
_
_
W
h
+ 0, 8
_ (3.3)
Step 4: Calculation of the actual patch length L.
L =

0
2
2 L (3.4)
Design Example
We will now consider two design cases to learn how the antenna varies if its
36
design is constrained to a xed frequency (Case I), or by xed dimensions
(Case II).
Case I Assuming the patch is built on a PCB of height h = 1.6mm and
dielectric constant
r
= 3.8, according to Equation (3.1), the width of the
patch W should be 111mm if the antenna must be resonant at 869MHz.
Following the design procedure, we obtain the eective dielectric constant

reff
= 3.69, the extension of the patch length L = 0.76mm, and the
length of the patch L 89mm.
Case II On the other hand, if we assume the width of the patch to be
W = 10mm, the resonance frequency can be calculated from Equation (3.1),
which results f
r
= 9.68GHz. Following the same design procedure, it gives
the eective dielectric constant
r
= 3.22, the extension of the patch length
L = 0.724mm, and the length of the patch L 7mm.
The results of these two cases are listed in Table 3.1. Since the band-
width of a basic patch antenna is typically limited to a few Mega Hertz,
patch antennas are usually designed for a specic operating frequency. We
can see from Table 3.1 that in order to have the antenna reach their best
performance and keep the target resonance frequency the patch size has to
be about 10 times bigger than the design constraints. Alternatively the an-
tenna has to resonate at a frequency 11 times higher than the desired one
if the antenna size ts the dimension constraints. Fortunately the required
radiating distance is within 3m, which indicates that the antenna is allowed
to work at a lower eciency level as long as the signals can be sent and
Substrate Patch
Case Height Dielectric Frequency Width Length
(mm) Constant (MHz) (mm) (mm)
I 1.6 3.8 869 111 89
II 1.6 3.8 9680 10 7
Table 3.1: Patch size of the microstrip antenna when the resonance frequency (Case I) or
the patch width (Case II) is xed.
37
received within this short distance. Microstrip antennas are simulated with
various geometries, feeding methods, and substrates with the goal of nding
a design which suits all the requirements.
3.2.3 Characteristics simulation
In this section, several microstrip antennas were simulated and compared
with dierent patch shapes, feeding methods, feeding positions, and sub-
strates. The simulation software used here was IE3D V11. IE3D is a full-
wave, method-of-moments(MoM) based electromagnetic simulator, solving
the current distribution on three dimensions and multilayer structures of
general shape.[33]
Scenario I
In this scenario the two antennas calculated in the design examples in Section
3.2.2 were simulated with similar conditions.
The antennas in the two cases were simulated with exact design condi-
tions and estimated dimensions calculated previously except that (1) the size
of the microstrip line of feeding was not included in the theoretical calcula-
tion, while it was taken into account in the computer simulation, and (2)
copper (conductivity = 5.8 10
7
S/m) was selected as the material for
the patch and ground plane, while the metal type was not considered in the
equations. The excitation in both cases was a voltage source ( V = 1V/0Deg,
Z = 50). The antenna was simulated in the frequency range from 400MHz
to 2GHz in Case I due to the fact that the computer was not able to provide
enough memory to solve the meshing matrix. However, a wider frequency
range of 400MHz to 10GHz was swept in Case II as the antenna in this case
was 10 times smaller, hence the meshing units were much fewer than those
in case I. The patch geometry, 3D radiation pattern, S11/Frequency plot
and Eciency/Frequency plot of Case I and Case II are shown in Figure 3.5
and Figure 3.6, respectively. The Radiation Eciency, Gain, and Directivity
values obtained from the simulation were listed in Table 3.2.
38
It can be seen from the radiation pattern plots that the antenna in Case
II is more directional than that in Case I. It may be read from he table that it
also has about 80% more radiation eciency. The antenna gain and directiv-
ity of the small antenna are about 25dBi and 1dBi greater than those of the
big one, respectively. The dierence is reasonable according to Equation(2.9).
It can be read from Eciency/Frequency plot that we have peaks close to
the right frequency in both cases, however in the S11/Frequency plot shows
that the antennas were resonant at around 700MHz and > 10GHz in Case
I and Case II respectively. The observed shift from the estimated resonance
frequency may be due to several parameters used in the simulations. For in-
stance the position and microstrip-line width in the feeding, the type of metal
Figure 3.5: Patch geometry, 869MHz radiation pattern, S11/Frequency plot and E-
ciency/Frequency plot in simulation of the 111 89mm rectangular patch antenna fed by
a microstrip-line.
39
Figure 3.6: Patch geometry, 9.7GHz radiation pattern, S11/Frequency plot and E-
ciency/Frequency plot in simulation of the 10 7mm rectangular patch antenna fed by a
microstrip-line.
chosen for patch and ground plane, and the dimensions of the substrate and
the ground plane. In the next scenario we will simulate and compare more
antennas to nd out how these parameters aect microstrip antenna perfor-
mance.
Case Patch Size Frequency Radiation Eciency Gain Directivity
(mm) (MHz) (%) (dBi) (dBi)
I 111 89 869 38.3 -19.9 5.99
II 10 7 9680 70 4.7 7.28
Table 3.2: The Radiation Eciency, Gain, and Directivity values of the microstrip anten-
nas in Design Example Case I and II from the simulations.
40
Scenario II
Microstrip antennas with geometries in dipole, square, rectangular, circu-
lar, ring, square spiral, and octagonal spiral congurations were built with
a metallic patch (conductivity = 4.9 10
7
S/m, thickness t = 0.002mm)
over a substrate (dielectric constant
r
= 3, thickness h = 0.5mm). A ground
plane (conductivity = 4.9 10
7
S/m) was applied on the backside of the
substrate.
The antennas were simulated in the frequency range of 0.411GHz. The
excitation was a voltage source (V = 1V/0Deg, Z = 50) for both strip
line feeding and probe feeding methods. In the case of 4 probe feeding
method, four voltage sources were applied (V 1 = 1V/0Deg, V 2 = 1V/90Deg,
V 3 = 1V/180Deg, V 4 = 1V/ 90Deg, Z = 50).
The patch geometry, 3D radiation pattern (at 869MHz), S11/Frequency
plot, Eciency/Frequency plot for all the antennas simulated are shown in
Figure A.1 A.16 in Appendix A. The radiation pattern of all the antennas
were directional in a wide range. Performances of antennas with dierent
patch geometries were analyzed with the radiation eciency and directivity
at 869MHz, as listed in table 3.3. (Figure A.1 A)
Case Antenna Size Feeding Radiation Directivity
pattern (mm) method eciency(%) (dBi)
1 Dipole 200.5 probe 0.34 5.06
2 Square 1010 probe 0.38 4.96
3 Square 1010 strip line 0.023 6.35
4 Square 1010 4 probes 0.096 4.94
5 Rectangular 2010 probe 0.66 4.83
6 Rectangular 2010 4 probes 0.22 4.98
7 Circular r = 5 probe 0.39 4.96
8 Ring r1 = 2, r2 = 5 probe 0.28 4.71
9 Square spiral 1010, 4 quarters probe 0.1 4.82
10 Square spiral 1010, 6 quarters probe 0.038 4.85
11 Square spiral 1010, 10 quarters strip line 0.00007 5.62
12 Octagonal spiral 1010, 10 quarters probe 0.01 4.80
Table 3.3: Performance of microstrip antennas with dierent patch geometry and feed
technique at 869MHz.
41
The directivity did not vary much across cases. Comparing Case 2, 5, 7,
and 8, we found that the larger the patch area, the higher the radiation e-
ciency. The probe feeding resulted in the highest radiation eciency among
all the three feed techniques for the same patch geometry; this result was
achieved by comparing either Case 2, 3, and 4, or Case 5 and 6. The spiral
gave 2 6 times less radiation eciency than other geometries, when com-
paring it with results from Cases 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 12. Furthermore, the
radiation eciency dropped signicantly as the turns of the spiral increased
(Case 9 and 10).
The inuence of substrate material and thickness was also studied. The
antennas were probe fed with the feeding position at the center of the left
side of the patch. The comparison is shown in table 3.4. It is obvious that
the thick substrate (h = 4mm) with a low dielectric constant (
r
= 3) gave
the highest radiation eciency ( = 6.81%).
The typical radiation eciency of antennas in this scenario was 0.3
6.81%. From the simulation, it can be concluded that we can expect good
performance from a microstrip antenna which has a big patch pattern, a thick
substrate with a low dielectric constant, and is probe fed. Therefore rectan-
gular, circular and ring patch antennas satisfying the dimension constraints
were included in the nal designs, and fed with a coaxial cable as the probe
in the measurements.
Antenna Size Substrate Substrate Radiation Directivity
Type (mm)
r
thickness h(mm) eciency(%) (dBi)
Square 1010 3 0.5 0.38 4.96
Square 1010 3 4 6.81 4.80
Square 1010 11.9 0.5 0.10 4.84
Square 1010 11.9 1.5 0.61 4.78
Square 1010 11.9 4 0.91 4.71
Square 1010 10.2 4 + 4 0.81 4.85
Rectangular 2010 10.2 4 + 4 2.10 5.03
Table 3.4: Performance of microstrip antennas with dierent substrate at 869MHz. The
probe feeding technique was applied. When the Substrate thickness item is 4 + 4, it
means two layers both are 4mm thick, and the patch is in between.
42
3.3 Loop antennas
Loop antennas are inexpensive and simple to construct. They are classied
as electrical small, if the circumference C is smaller than one-tenth of the
wavelength (C < 0.1), and electrically large if it is comparable to one wave-
length (C )[3]. Loop antennas come in a variety of congurations such as
rectangle, square, triangle, ellipse and circle. However, the radiation pattern
and radiation resistance of a small loop antenna are independent of the loop
shape and only sensitive to the loop area.
Loop antennas are normally used in applications operating at frequencies
up to 3GHz. Small loop antennas are the most ecient antennas for small
human worn equipment such as pagers, RF tags, and controllers, since the low
conductivity of human body will not degrade the antenna performances[8].
Single turn small loops have very small radiation resistance, which can be
substantially improved by adding more turns. However, the eciency is still
very poor, which it the reason why small loop antennas are usually applied
as receiving antennas. Nevertheless as we have a small radiation range in the
body sensor networks, and the loop antenna is less aected by the human
body [9], the loop antenna is still a preferred choice for the on-the-body sen-
sors. In this section, we will focus on small loop antennas.
Figure 3.7: Orientation for the loop antenna as a dual of the dipole antenna, where the
loop is in the xy-plane and the dipole in the z -axis. S is the area of the circular loop,
l is the length of the dipole, and I
0
is the electric current running through the antennas.
43
3.3.1 Small loop antenna characteristics
The small loop antenna is the dual antenna to the innitesimal magnetic
dipole antenna when the dipole is normal to the plane of the loop[3], as
shown in Figure 3.7. The small circular loop antenna is located in the xy-
plane delimiting an area of S and carries a uniform current of I
0
in the
anti-clockwise direction, and the dipole of l in length is placed along the
z -axis and carries the same amount of current I
0
in the z -direction.
Due to the duality principle, in the far elds the electric eld of a small
loop antenna is identical to the magnetic eld of the short dipole antenna
(E
loop
= H
dipole
), and the magnetic eld of a small loop antenna is identical
to the electric eld of the short dipole antenna(H
loop
= E
dipole
). Given that
the elds radiated by the small loop antennas and the short dipole antennas
are of the same mathematical form, the radiation power for these two types
of antennas are equal and the radiation patterns are the same. As a conse-
quence, the radiation from a small loop antenna is maximum in the plane of
the loop. The directivity D is the same as identical to that of the dipole and
is given by [3]:
D
0
= 1.761 dB (3.5)
The rectangular antenna gains more attention in this project because we can
adjust both the length and the width in order to allocate the limited space
more eciently. The conguration is presented in Figure 3.8, where
L - the length of the antenna
W - the width of the antenna
w

- the width of the trace

t - the thickness of the trace
The equivalent circuit of a small loop antenna is show in Figure 3.9 [3],
where
R
r
- radiation resistance
44
Figure 3.8: Conguration of the proposed rectangular loop antenna with a loop dimension
of W L and a trace dimension of w

t.
R
l
- loss resistance
L
A
- inductance of the loop
L
i
- inductance of the trace
C
r
- resonance capacitor
The input impedance Z
in
is represented by
Z
in
= R
in
+jX
in
= (R
r
+R
l
) +j(L
A
+L
i
) (3.6)
and the input resistance is
R
in
= (R
r
+R
l
) (3.7)
whereas the input reactance is
X
in
= j(L
A
+L
i
) (3.8)
where is the angular frequency and = 2f.
The capacitor C
r
is applied parallel to Z
in
compensating the imaginary
part of the input impedance, so as to tune the antenna to the desired reso-
nance frequency. At resonance, the capacitance of C
r
is determined by
C
r
=
1
2f
X
in
R
2
in
+X
2
in
(3.9)
45
Figure 3.9: Small loop antenna RCL equivalent circuit, which consists of the radiation
resistance R
r
, the loss resistance R
l
, the loop inductance L
A
, and the trace inductance
L
i
.
Under resonance, the input impedance Z

in
is then equal to
Z

in
= R

in
= R
in
+
X
2
in
R
in
(3.10)
In free space, the radiation resistance is given by [3]
R
r
= 31171N
2
S
2

4
for C < /5 (3.11)
where N is the turns of the loop, S is the area and S = WL. This equation is
valid for small loops with circular, rectangular, and elliptical congurations.
The loss resistance R
l
for the common rectangular antenna is given by [3]
R
l
=
W +L
w

+t
N
_
f

for W t (3.12)
where is the permeability and = 410
7
N/A
2
, is the conductivity
and for copper,
copper
= 5.8 10
7
S/m. The radiation resistance increases
with the number of antenna turns (N) by a factor of N
2
, while the losses of
the loop increase with a factor of about N at the same time. If N > 1, the
loop extends with N turns in the direction normal to the loop plane. Since
the antennas concerned in this project are all planar, we consider only the
single turn loop antenna, which gives N = 1.
46
The inductance of the antenna L
A
and the inductance of the trace L
i
are
given by [3]
L
A
= 2
a

_
log
_
a
b
_
0.774
_
(3.13)
L
i
=
S
2a
(3.14)
where a =

WL, and b = 0.35t + 0.24w

(Equation 2.8)
The radiation eciency
r
is commonly given as[3]

r
=
R
r
R
r
+R
l
(3.15)
It can be read from the equation that the bigger the radiation resistance is
the higher radiation eciency the antenna can reach.
3.3.2 Design Procedure
The design of a small loop antenna was based on the equations given in
the last section. Since the space for the antenna was already reserved (<
10 20mm) and the operating frequency was settled (869MHz), we are only
left to decide on a compromise between smaller dimensions and better an-
tenna performance. The dimensions and electrical characteristics were cal-
culated with the following procedure.
1) We rst xed the width of the loop W to 10mm and the operating
frequency f to 869MHz. The antennas will take certain patterns in copper
printed on PCB with a thickness of t = 35m.
2) We took the length of the loop L to be 20mm. According to Equa-
tion 3.11, the radiation resistance was R
r
= 0.088.
3) We then chose the tolerated value of the radiation eciency to be

= 50%. Given Equation 3.15, the loss resistance must be equal to the
radiation resistance, which required the trace width to be w

= 2.6mm from
47
Frequency Loop width Loop length Trace width Trace thickness
(MHz) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
869 10 20 2.6 0.035
Radiation Resistance (R
r
) 0.088 Loss Resistance (R
l
) 0.088
Loop Inductance (L
A
) 12.96 nH Trace Inductance (L
i
) 8.88 nH
Radiation Eciency () 50 % Resonance Capacitance (C
r
) 705 nF
Table 3.5: Dimensions and electric characteristics of a rectangular loop antenna designed
at 869MHz.
Equation 3.12.
4) The inductance of the loop and the trace were calculated from Equa-
tion 3.13 and Equation 3.14 respectively, and L
A
= 12.96nH, L
i
= 8.88nH.
5) The capacitance of the resonance capacitor was calculated from Equa-
tion 3.9, resulting in Cr 705nF.
The electric characteristics of this design were summarized in Table 3.5. It
can be seen from the table that the inductance of the trace L
i
is not negligible
since it corresponds to 68% of the loop inductance L
A
. The calculation shows
that with the following dimensions: W = 10mm, L = 20mm, t = 35m,
w

= 2.6mm, the radiation eciency can reach

= 50% at 869MHz if the
antenna is compensated with a resonance capacitor of Cr 705nF. The
rectangular loop antenna in this design was simulated with IE3D in free
space and on the human body in the next section.
3.3.3 Characteristics simulation
In this section, the small loop antenna in the design example was simulated
in dierent surroundings. The simulation software used continues to be IE3D
V11 [33].
The small loop antenna was built with a copper layer (conductivity =
5.8 10
7
S/m, thickness t = 0.035mm) over a substrate (dielectric constant
48

r
= 3.8, thickness h = 1.6mm). When investigating the eect of the human
body, the electrical parameters to model skin and fat are listed in Table 3.6.
In this scenario the substrate of the antenna was placed directly over the
human skin.
The rectangular loop antenna was simulated using the wire antenna model
in IE3D over a substrate without a ground plane in free space (Case I) as well
as on the human body (Case II). The Patch geometry, the antennas radiation
pattern at 869MHz , its S11/Frequency plot and its Eciency/Frequency
plot are shown in Figure 3.14 and Figure 3.15 for each case respectively. As
seen in the patch geometry sketches, the corners of the rectangles were ex-
ploited to optimize the radiation eciency [28]. The Radiation Eciency,
Gain, and Directivity values obtained in simulation by operating the antenna
at 869MHz are listed in Table 3.7.
Loop antennas are commonly fed with two ports at the two ends of the
loop. In the simulation, the two ports were substituted by a positive and a
negative port, since the ground plane was absent. This substitution resulted
in the very low radiation eciency, which was not comparable to the results
given by the theoretical calculation. Therefore we concluded only on the
simulation results. It can be seen from the radiation pattern plot in the two
gures that the human body reected the elds in the upper half part of the
space. The radiation eciency in Case II was 60% of that in Case I, because
parts of the electromagnetic energy were coupled into the body tissue. The
gain increased by 3dB while the antenna was placed on the human body than
that in free space, and the directivity was 3 times higher, since the elds were
reected.
Biological Tissue Permittivity Conductivity Thickness
(
r
) (, S/m) (mm)
Skin 46.7 0.69 10
Fat 11.6 0.08 14
Table 3.6: Electrical data of biological tissues (Skin and Fat) for the human body layer
model[26]
49
Case Radiation Eciency Gain Directivity
(%) (dBi) (dBi)
I - in free space 0.87 -39.7 1.98
II - on the human body 0.58 -36.8 6.35
Table 3.7: The Radiation Eciency, Gain, and Directivity values at 869MHz of the
1020mm rectangular loop antenna in free space or on the human body from simulations.
The performance of the antennas and the eects that the human body
have on the antennas are not complete until an implementation can be mea-
sured in real use. Therefore several antennas satisfying the requirements
were designed based on the estimations and the simulations available to date
and sent for manufacturing; these antennas are presented in the next section.
3.4 The designs selected for manufacturing
With the numerical estimations and the computer simulations for dierent
congurations complete, four types of antennas were considered for manu-
facturing:
PCB-A: antennas printed on PCB with a ground plane;
PCB-B: antennas printed on PCB without a ground plane;
Flex-A: antennas printed on Flex with a ground plane;
Flex-B: antennas printed on Flex without a ground plane;
The metallic layers, including the ground plane was made in copper
with a thickness of 35um for all four types. The conductivity of copper
is = 5.8 10
7
S/m. The substrate applied in both the PCB-A and PCB-
B designs was 1.6mm thick with a dielectric constant of 3.8, while it was
0.3mm thick in the Flex-A and Flex-B designs with a dielectric constant of
50
4. Antennas in these four types of designs were manufactured by the com-
pany PrintLine.
3.4.1 PCB-A antennas
The PCB-A antennas were all microstrip patch antennas in type. Three of
them are shown in Figure 3.10. PCB-A(1) is a ring microstrip antenna with
the outer radius r1 = 5mm and the inner radius r2 = 1.5mm, giving it a
trace width of w

= 3.5mm. PCB-A(2) is a circular microstrip antenna with

the radius r = 5mm. PCB-A(3) is a rectangular frame microstrip antenna
with the trace width r = 2.6mm. The required feeding method applied for
this type of antennas is probe feeding.
3.4.2 PCB-B antennas
PCB-B designs can be of two types: printed loop or spiral antennas. As
described in previous sections, the antennas of interest in this thesis are the
printed loop antennas as shown in Figure 3.11. PCB-B(1) is a circular loop
antenna with the radius r = 5mm and the trace width w

= 3.5mm. PCB-
B(2) is a rectangular loop antenna with the length L = 20mm, the width
Figure 3.10: Picture of the PCB-A type antennas. (1) 1010mm ring microstrip antenna
with the trace width 3.5mm, (2) 10 10mm circular microstrip antenna, (3) 10 20mm
rectangular frame microstrip antenna with the trace width 2.6mm.
51
Figure 3.11: Picture of the PCB-B type antennas. (1) 10 10mm circular loop antenna
with the trace width 3.5mm, (2) 1020mm rectangular loop antenna with the trace width
2.6mm.
W = 10mm, and the trace width w

= 2.6mm. These loop antennas should

be fed from both ends of the loop.
3.4.3 Flex-A antennas
The Flex-A antennas included microstrip patch antennas in various geome-
tries, as described in Figure 3.12. Flex-A(1) is a circular microstrip antenna
with the radius r1 = 15mm. Flex-A(2) is a square microstrip antenna with
the side length a = 30mm. Flex-A(3) is a ring microstrip antenna with an
outer radius r1 = 15mm and an inner radius r2 = 12mm, giving it a trace
width of w

= 3mm. Flex-A(4) is a square frame microstrip antenna with

the side length a = 30mm and trace width w

= 8mm. The feeding method

applied for this type of antennas should be probe feed.
3.4.4 Flex-B antennas
Similar to the PCB-B design, printed loop or spiral antennas are also the
potential candidates for the Flex-B design. Again the antenna of interest in
52
this thesis was a circular loop antenna, which has as outer radius r1 = 15mm
and as inner radius r2 = 12mm, giving it a trace width w

= 3mm. This
antenna is shown in Figure 3.13. Antennas of this type should be fed from
the two ends of the loop.
Figure 3.12: Picture of the Flex-A type antennas. (1) 30 30mm circular microstrip
antenna, (2) 3030mm square microstrip antenna, (3) 3030mm ring microstrip antenna,
(4) 30 30mm square frame microstrip antenna.
Figure 3.13: Picture of the Flex-B type 30 30mm circular loop antenna.
53
3.5 Summary
In this chapter microstrip patch antennas and loop antennas were studied and
characterized with numerical estimation and computer simulation. Based on
the knowledge gained in this work, four types of antennas were designed and
sent for manufacturing: PCB-A, antennas printed on PCB with a ground
plane, PCB-B, antennas printed on PCB without a ground plane, Flex-A,
antennas printed on Flex with a ground plane, and Flex-B, antennas printed
on Flex without a ground plane. These implementations were tested and the
experimental results are discussed in the next chapter.
54
Figure 3.14: Patch geometry, 869MHz radiation pattern, S11/Frequency plot and Ef-
ciency/Frequency plot in simulation of the 10 20mm rectangular loop antenna with
microstrip-line feeding in the free space.
Figure 3.15: Patch geometry, 869MHz radiation pattern, S11/Frequency plot and Ef-
ciency/Frequency plot in simulation of the 10 20mm rectangular loop antenna with
microstrip-line feeding on the human body.
55
Chapter 4
Experimental Work and Result
Analysis
To validate the theoretical and simulation expectations, experimental results
are needed. The following parameters are used to describe the performance
of an antenna system: the impedance, gain, directivity, eciency radiation
pattern, current distribution, and polarization. We gauge the quality of our
antenna design and implementation with measurements of the one port S-
parameter S
11
, which characterizes the return loss of the antennas in the
frequency range 400MHz 2GHz.
4.1 S
11
realization
S-parameters, shorthand for Scattering(S) parameters, are used to describe
the electrical behavior of linear electrical networks. They are mostly mea-
sured at radio frequency (RF) and microwave frequencies. S-parameters are
related to many electrical properties of networks or components such as gain,
return loss, voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) and amplier stability.
We consider the common 2-port network as shown in Figure 4.1, where a
i
and b
i
(i = 1, 2) are the normalized incident power waves and the normalized
reected power waves at PORT i, respectively, and Z
0
is the nominal system
impedance which is 50 most of the time. The S-parameter matrix is given
56
Figure 4.1: Sketch of a 2-port network, where Port1 has the incident wave a
1
and the
incident wave b
1
; and Port2 has the incident wave a
2
and the incident wave b
2
, and the
system has the nominal impedance Z
0
.
by [18]
_
b1
b2
_
=
_
S
11
S
12
S
21
S
22
_ _
a1
a2
_
This equation shows the relationship between the incident and reected
power waves at each network port in terms of the networks individual S-
parameters.
S
11
=
b1
a1
is the input reection coecient with the output matched to
the system impedance Z
0
,
S
21
=
b2
a1
is the forward transmission coecient with the input matched
to the system impedance Z
0
,
S
12
=
b1
a2
is the reverse transmission coecient with the input matched
to the system impedance Z
0
,
S
22
=
b2
a2
is the output reection coecient with the input matched to
the system impedance Z
0
.
S-parameters are complex quantities, therefore they are typically char-
acterized by magnitude and phase, and dependent on frequency. Reection
coecients are related to VSWRs and impedances, while transmission coef-
cients are referred to as gains and attenuations.
57
In our experiments, the antenna was modeled as a one port component,
thus only the input reection coecient S
11
is measured. We can then cal-
culate the input return loss and the VSWR at the input port. The input
return loss value RL describes the reduction in the amplitude of the reected
energy as compared to the forward energy, and is given by [18]
RL = 20 log
10
|S
11
| (4.1)
Return loss is usually expressed in decibels. The smaller the value is, the
smaller the loss.
The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) at the input port is a measure
of port match in a scalar linear quantity, and is given by [18]
V SWR =
1 +|S
11
|
1 |S
11
|
(4.2)
Table 4.1 gives a numerical comparison of the VSWR, the refection coef-
cient and the return loss. In the ideal case, when no reection occurs, the
reection coecient equals to 0, and the VSWR is 1. Practically however,
the VSWR is larger than 1. A bigger VSWR value indicates a smaller loss
Table 4.1: VSWR, refection coecient and return loss in values [22].
58
of power. As a rule of thumb, designers keep the VSWR value smaller than
2 to obtain a good antenna performance in the whole system. When the
VSWR = 2, |S
11
| =
1
3
and RL = 9.5dB. In our project, the communica-
tion range is quite small (< 3m), therefore a higher VSWR is acceptable. In
the evaluation of our designs, we select the tolerance VSWR to be 3, which
corresponds to |S
11
| = 0.5 and RL = 6dB. However, the nal decision on
the critical VSWR value for the antenna design should take into account a
system level complete, which is not included in this thesis.
4.2 Experimental procedures of the 1-Port
S
11
measurement
Coaxial cables and SubMiniature version A (SMA) connectors were applied
to connect the antenna to a network analyzer in the Delta High Frequency
Laboratory. The experiments were performed following the procedures de-
scribed below.
4.2.1 Preparation of the Antennas
The SMA connectors are the 508 1191 Straight Plugs Mil-Crimp 50
ordered from the company Farnell in One. They were assembled with the
RG316 coaxial cable following the requirements on cable striping dimensions
(a) Product picture of Farnell
SMA connector 1-1478922-0 [19].
(b) Picture of the assem-
bled SMA connector with
the coaxial cable.
Figure 4.2: Picture of the SMA connector before (a) and after assembly (b).
59
and the recommended crimp sleeve in its Customer Drawing[20]. The pic-
tures of the SMA connector are shown in Figure 4.2.
To prepare the antennas for measurement, all the coaxial cables were cut
to the same length (18cm). One end was assembled with the SMA connector,
and the other end was soldered with the antenna. Holes were drilled into the
PCBs where the feeding points were positioned for the antennas. The cables
worked as feeding probes for the antennas, with their center conductors sol-
dered to the surface of the antenna patterns and their braids soldered to the
ground plane in case of the microstrip patch antenna, or simply left open if
there was no ground plane in the antenna structure. One probe was applied
for the patch antennas using the probe feed technique described in Section
3.2.1. Two probes were soldered to the no-ground-plane antennas, one on
each end of the antenna pattern. Refer to Figure 4.3 to see the antennas
ready for measurements.
4.2.2 Calibration of the Network Analyzer
The measurement equipment used was the Hewlett Packard (HP) 8753E RF
Vector Network Analyzer (VNA), which allows measurement within the fre-
Figure 4.3: Picture of antennas assembled with cables and SMA connectors. (a) 30
30mm circular loop antenna without a ground plane on Flex Design, (b) 30 30mm ring
microstrip patch antenna with a ground plane on Flex Design, (c) 10 20mm rectangular
microstrip patch antenna with a ground plane on PCB Design, (d) 30 30mm circular
loop antenna with a ground plane on Flex Design.
60
quency range 30kHz 3GHz. We executed the one port reection measure-
ment to obtain the reection coecient S
11
, where a S
11
-1 PORT calibra-
tion was necessary to avoid errors in directivity, source match, and reection
tracking [21].
The network analyzer must be calibrated to the end point of the coaxial
cable where it connected the antennas. To complete the calibration, three of
the assembled SMA connectors and cables were used as calibration standards,
one with the center conductor and the braid of the cable soldered together to
perform SHORT at the load end; one with them open to perform OPEN,
and another one with a surface-mount resistor of 47 soldered in between
the center conductor and the braid to perform LOAD. Since the charac-
teristic impedance of the system is 50, the 47 resistor was selected as the
closet standard resistance value to 50 that was available in the lab. The
calibration was then done with 3 steps:
(a) Setting the frequency range. The frequency range chosen for the mea-
surements was 400MHz 2GHz, because frequency of interest was around
900MHz. Furthermore, the rather small size of the antennas may cause
them to resonate at a higher frequency, which is an important behavior to
observe.
(b) Select S
11
-1 PORT calibration type. The VNA will prompt the
user to plug in the SHORT, OPEN, and LOAD calibration standards
in turn.
(c) Save the calibration and test it by checking the SMITH CHART with
the LOAD connected. A mark should be seen in the middle of the chart,
which means the load is 50.
61
4.2.3 S
11
Measurements
It is very important to keep the length of the cables identical for all the cal-
ibration standards and antennas under test. The microstrip patch antennas
were attached to the network analyzer by connecting the SMA connector to
the port connector. The no-ground-plane antennas with two probes were
attached to the network analyzer through a splitter, which divided the sig-
nal from the port on the analyzer to two identical signals. On the network
analyzer, we can read the input impedance from the SMITH CHART plot
and the magnitude or phase of the reection coecient from the LOG/LIN
MAG and PHASE plot. The output data from the network analyzer were
the real and imaginary parts of the reection coecient. 201 test points
were gathered in the 400MHz to 2GHz range, which were then exported to
a oppy disk from the network analyzer.
S-parameters are essentially the same parameters as some of the terms
such as impedance and return loss. We should separate the fundamental
denition of S-parameters and the format in which they are displayed for the
ease of analysis [21]. S-parameters can be expressed as real-and-imaginary
or magnitude-and-phase pairs. In our measurements, after connecting the
antenna to the calibrated network analyzer, the impedance of the antenna
under test was checked from the SMITH CHART at a particular frequency. If
the antenna is not resonant at the desired frequency, a matching network can
be added to the antenna to tune the antenna and maximize the power transfer
at a single frequency. The network is designed under the constraints set by
Equation 2.11, in which the load impedance is conjugate matched to the
source impedance. The matching network needs to be specically designed
for each antenna. The construction of a conjugate matching network is left
to the next experimental stage when we have decided which antenna will
be applied to the sensors. However, as a quick solution to the simplest case
when the impedance shows that the antenna is inductive, it is possible to tune
the antenna to the desired resonance frequency at f
0
by adding a resonance
capacitor in parallel to the antenna. The capacitance C
r
is calculated from
the inductance L by [18]
62
C
r
=
1

2
L
=
1
(2f
0
)
2
L
(4.3)
Implementing the conjugate network solution at high frequencies implies
taking into consideration the lead resistance and inductance of the compo-
nents in the network. In the simplest solution, we consider only the reactance
compensation, which leads the focus to capacitors. For a normal capacitor,
the lead inductance is 1nH/mm [23]. For instance, if we need a resonance
capacitor of 100nF to tune the antenna at f
0
= 869MHz, and if we as-
sume the two leads of the capacitor being 5mm each, the lead inductance is
L
l
= 1(25) nH = 10 nH. The impedance contributed by the capacitance
and the lead inductance respectively are
X
C
=
1
C
=
1
2f
0
C
=
1
2 869 10
6
100 10
9
0.0018
X
L
= L = 2f
0
L = 2 869 10
6
10 10
9
54.6
With X
C
<< X
L
, the capacitor is actually more like a lossy inductor.
Fortunately the surface-mount stacked capacitors provide us a better option.
They have negligibly small leads hence little lead inductance if soldered close
to the antenna. If we measure the return loss with a right resonance capac-
itor in parallel to the antenna, a peak should be found around the design
resonance frequency.
Finally the antenna was tested while covered with a piece of adhesives
sticking the antenna on the human body. The adhesives were the 1mm thick
hydrocolloid adhesives from the company Compeed

. At this moment, the

antenna was only tested when placed on the human wrist. In subsequent
experiments, the antenna should be placed on dierent parts of the human
body where the sensors will eventually be located, like the arm, the chest,
the waist, or the leg to measure the impact of the body substrate in dierent
63
sizes. Moreover, the antenna needs to be tested over a longer period of time
while placed on the body, as the adhesives will absorb water and salt, which
may inuence the antenna performance.
4.3 Experiment results analysis
Three antennas went through the full set of the S
11
measurements. They
were
the 10 20mm rectangular loop antenna on the PCB-A Design,
the 30 30mm ring microstrip antenna on the Flex-A Design,
the 30 30mm circular loop antenna on the Flex-B Design.
Each antenna was measured in the following scenarios:
Case 1: the bare antenna,
Case 2: the antenna in parallel with the resonance capacitor,
Case 3: the antenna with the capacitor covered by a piece of adhesives
and placed on the human wrist.
4.3.1 The PCB-B rectangular loop antenna
The PCB-B rectangular loop antenna was fed with two coaxial cables sol-
dered at each end of the loop. We read from the SMITH CHART in Case
1 that the antenna impedance is Z = 3.1 + j42 at 869MHz, which corre-
sponds to an inductance of 7.69nH. The resonance capacitor can be calcu-
lated from Equation 4.3 to be 172pF. Choosing from the standard capacitors,
we have Cr = 220pF.
Figure 4.4 shows the return loss plot as a function of frequency. Due to
the resonance capacitor braking before executing Case 3 with no substitute
64
Figure 4.4: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 10 20mm PCB-B rectangular loop antenna in Case 1 and 2.
F1 = 869MHz, F2 = 915MHz.
available in the laboratory at that moment, the gures contains only the
rst two cases. In Case 1, the return loss is higher than 0dB in the whole
frequency range. The antenna does not work in 869MHz to 2GHz. In Case
2, the capacitor tuned the antenna to the resonance frequency of 869MHz.
Peaks with return loss lower than 6dB occurred around 1.2GHz, 1.55GHz,
and 1.9GHz too.
The values of return loss at the frequency of interest in dierent cases
were read and marked in Figure 4.8 and 4.9. The VSWR values were then
calculated based on them. The results are listed in Table 4.2. In Case 1, the
reection coecient was bigger than 1. Therefore the antenna was not ex-
cited in this frequency range. In Case 2, we obtained resonance at 869MHz,
and the reection coecient was 0.44, which gives an acceptable VSWR value
of 2.6.
65
Case Return Loss (dB) |S
11
| VSWR
1 0.62 1.07 -29.6
2 -7.08 0.44 2.6
Table 4.2: Return Loss, |S
11
|, VSWR values at 869MHz of the rectangular loop antenna.
4.3.2 The Flex-A ring microstrip antenna
The Flex-A ring microstrip antenna was fed with one coaxial cable as a probe
at the outer edge of the ring. The assembled antenna can be seen in Fig-
ure 4.3(b).
We followed the same experimental procedures as described in the sec-
tion above. The antenna impedance was read from the SMITH CHART to
be Z = 0.65+j9.65 at 869MHz, where the antenna inductance was 1.77nH.
The value of the resonance capacitor was calculated to be 748pF using Equa-
tion 4.3; we chose a standard capacitor of Cr = 680pF for our measurements.
The return losses in the three cases are plotted as a function of frequency
in Figure 4.5. In Case 1, as the Return Loss/Frequency curve showed, the
antenna did not resonate in the frequency range according to the return
loss < 6dB (VSWR3) rule, although small peaks occurred at frequencies
of 1.12GHz, 1.7GHz, and 1.9GHz. In Case 2, the curve dropped three
deep peaks around 550MHz, 632MHz and 1.85GHz. In between the last
two peaks, the curve was almost identical to that of Case 1. This can be
explained by the structure of the antenna. The loop pattern contributes in-
ductive inductance, while the patch creates capacitors with the ground plane.
The extra capacitor helps forming a LCC-circuit, and shifting the resonate
frequency. In Case 3, the return loss was reduced by about 4dB on average
from Case 2, while the resonance frequencies were lowered by 50MHz.
The peak at 632MHz in Case 2 almost disappeared in Case 3 with the re-
turn loss increased by 10dB and the frequency reduced by 50MHz, which
was not expected. The reduction in return loss was more obvious in the
66
Figure 4.5: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 30 30mm Flex-A ring microstrip antenna in three cases.
F1 = 869MHz, F2 = 915MHz.
higher frequency range.
The Return Loss/Frequency curves in the full frequency range were plot-
ted with data tips in the three cases separately, as shown in Figure 4.104.12.
Based on the return losses read from the curves, the VSWR can be calculates
for all cases. The results are listed in Table 4.3. In Case 1 and 2, the reec-
tion coecients were almost 1, which indicated very large VSWR values. In
Case Return Loss (dB) |S
11
| VSWR
1 -0.21 0.98 99
2 -0.24 0.97 66
3 -2.32 0.76 7.3
Table 4.3: Return Loss, |S
11
|, VSWR values at 869MHz of the Flex-A ring microstrip
antenna.
67
Case 3, the reection is less than that in Case 1 and 2. However a VSWR
value of 7 is still much bigger than the tolerance value 3. This antenna will
therefore need a specic matching circuit to resonate at the right frequency.
4.3.3 The Flex-B circular loop antenna
The Flex-B circular loop antenna was fed with two coaxial cables at each end
of the loop. The pictures of the assembled antenna are shown in Figure 4.6.
The antenna impedance was read from the SMITH CHART in Case 1
to be Z = 11.5 + j115 at 869MHz, where the antenna inductance was
27.6nH. The resonance capacitor value was calculated from Equation 4.3 to
be 48pF, and the later measurements were made with the closest standard
capacitor Cr = 47pF.
The reection coecient was collected under the three cases. Loading the
experimental data to the computer, we then calculated the return loss with
Equation 4.1, and the VSWR with Equation 4.2, respectively. The return
(a) Picture of the 30 30mm Flex-B cir-
cular loop antenna.
(b) Picture of the 30 30mm Flex-B
circular loop antenna in parallel with a
surface-mount stacked capacitor (up-
per) and covered with a piece of adhe-
sives (lower).
Figure 4.6: Picture of the assembled 30 30mm Flex-B circular loop antenna in the S
11
measurement.
68
losses in the three cases are plotted as a function of frequency in Figure 4.7.
It is obvious that the antenna itself was not resonant at any frequency
lower than 2GHz. The return loss was about 0dB in the total frequency
range, which indicated that the reected energy was equal to the energy pre-
sented, and the antenna was barely working. We know from the impedance
that this antenna is inductive, which allows us to tune the antenna by adding
a capacitor in parallel. The calculated capacitance was quite close to a stan-
dard value, therefore creating a peak at the design resonance frequency of
869MHz in the Return Loss/Frequency curve (the green curve in Figure 4.7).
With the value satisfying the Equation 4.3, the capacitor and the inductor
actually form a LC resonator, and usually have more than one harmonic
frequency. This is the reason that some peaks occur in the same curve at
around 480MHz, 1.2GHz, 1.6Hz, and 1.9GHz. In case 3, the return loss
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 F1F2
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
5
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
bare antenna
in parallel with Cr = 47 pF
in parallel with Cr and covered by adhesive (onthebody)
Figure 4.7: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 30 30mm Flex-B circular loop antenna in three cases. F1 =
869MHz, F2 = 915MHz.
69
Case Return Loss (dB) |S
11
| VSWR
1 0.386 1.04 -51
2 -19.9 0.1 1.22
3 -15.04 0.18 1.64
Table 4.4: Return Loss, |S
11
|, VSWR values at 869MHz of the Flex-B circular loop
antenna.
was reduced by about 5dB on average while the resonance frequencies were
lowered by 20MHz.
In Figure 4.134.15, the Return Loss/Frequency curves are plotted in
the frequency range 700MHz 1GHz for the three cases separately. The
VSWR values were calculated from the measured return loss values at 869MHz
in all cases. The results are listed in Table 4.4. In Case 1, the reection
coecient was about 1, indicating maximum reection. No energy was prop-
agated to the antenna. In Case 2 and 3, the reection coecient was 0.1 and
0.18 respectively, which gave the VSWR value of 1.22 and 1.64, respectively.
They both satised the tolerance value of VSWR < 3. With small reection
coecients, the reection power is only a small part of the input power. We
can conclude that the Flex-B circular loop antenna works properly with a
resonance capacitor, in air or on the human wrist.
4.4 Summary
In this section, the antennas were evaluated using the reection coecient
S
11
. Antennas were assembled with cables and SMA connectors in order to
perform the 1-port S
11
measurements in the frequency range 400MHz
2GHz. Three antennas were tested, and they were the 10 20mm PCB-B
rectangular loop antenna, the 3030mm Flex-A ring microstrip antenna, and
the 3030mm Flex-B circular loop antenna. The antennas were evaluated in
three dierent scenarios: the bare antenna, the antenna in parallel with the
resonance capacitor, and the antenna with the capacitor covered by a piece
of adhesives and placed on the human wrist. Loop antennas are inherently
70
inductive. Therefore they are easy to tune with a resonance capacitor, while
the microstrip antenna normally need a more complicated matching network
due to the capacitance between the patch and the ground plane. The human
body reduced the return loss by 4 5dB and lowered the resonance frequency
by 20 50MHz. In general, the bigger the dimension of the antenna, the
better the performance in the measurements. The tuned 30 30mm Flex-
B circular loop antenna gave quite satisfying characteristics with a return
loss of about 20dB, a reection coecient of 0.1 and a VSWR of 1.22 at
869MHz. The tuned 10 20mm PCB-B rectangular loop antenna was also
acceptable with return loss 7dB, reection coecient = 0.44 and VSWR
= 2.6 at 869MHz.
71
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 F1F2
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
X: 869
Y: 0.6249
X: 915
Y: 0.6875
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)

R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Figure 4.8: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 10 20mm PCB-B rectangular loop antenna. The return loss
is read to be 0.62dB at 869MHz.
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 F1F2
25
20
15
10
5
0
5
X: 869
Y: 7.082
X: 915
Y: 3.067
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)

R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Figure 4.9: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 10 20mm PCB-B rectangular loop antenna, and a 220pF
capacitor added in parallel. The return loss is read to be 7.08dB at 869MHz.
72
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 F1F2
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
1
X: 688
Y: 0.6558
X: 915
Y: 0.2739
X: 869
Y: 0.2137
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
X: 1144
Y: 2.777
Figure 4.10: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 30 30mm Flex-A ring microstrip antenna. The return loss is
read to be 0.21dB at 869MHz.
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 F1F2
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
2
X: 869
Y: 0.2401
X: 915
Y: 0.2429
X: 632
Y: 12.7
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Figure 4.11: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 30 30mm Flex-A ring microstrip antenna, with a 680pF
capacitor in parallel. The return loss is read to be 0.24dB at 869MHz.
73
400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 F1F2
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
X: 869
Y: 2.319
X: 915
Y: 3.164
X: 488
Y: 8.534
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Figure 4.12: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
400MHz 2GHz for the 30 30mm Flex-A ring microstrip antenna, with a 680pF
capacitor in parallel, covered by a piece of adhesives and placed on the human wrist. The
return loss is read to be 2.32dB at 869MHz.
700 750 800 850 900 950 1000 869 915
0.35
0.4
0.45
0.5
0.55
0.6
X: 869
Y: 0.3862
X: 915
Y: 0.392
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Figure 4.13: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
700MHz 1GHz for the 30 30mm Flex-B circular loop antenna. The return loss is
read to be 0.386dB at 869MHz.
74
700 750 800 850 900 950 1000 869 915
22
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
X: 869
Y: 19.9
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
X: 915
Y: 7.682
Figure 4.14: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
700MHz 1GHz for the 3030mm Flex-B circular loop antenna, with a 47pF capacitor
in parallel. The return loss is read to be 19.9dB at 869MHz.
700 750 800 850 900 950 1000 869 915
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
5
X: 869
Y: 15.04
X: 915
Y: 8.053
Plot of Return Loss vs. Frequency
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Figure 4.15: Plot of the Return Loss (RL) as a function of the Frequency in the range
700MHz 1GHz for the 3030mm Flex-B circular loop antenna, with a 47pF capacitor
in parallel, covered by a piece of adhesives and placed on the human wrist. The return
loss is read to be 15.04dB at 869MHz.
75
Chapter 5
Conclusions and Future work
In this chapter, the investigation was summarized, the work for this project
concluded and the possible future research will be proposed.
5.1 Conclusions
The purpose of this project was to investigate, design, and characterize suit-
able antennas for wireless on-the-body sensors, which are promising compo-
nents in the Wireless Body Sensor Networks.
The work started by specifying the antenna with dimensions, the operat-
ing frequency, the limitations on radiation power and range, power consump-
tion, and the location of the antenna in the sensor as well as on the body.
At this stage, the antennas are integrated with sensors and placed outside
the human body, hence the antenna/human-body interaction was studied by
modeling the body tissue in layers as substrates of the antennas. Two kinds
of design were included, namely the PCB design and the Flex design. In the
PCB design, where the antenna was integrated with all other electronics of
the sensor on a PCB, the dimensions of the antenna was limited to 10203
mm. The Flex design was considered in order to obtain larger size and higher
gain than the PCB design by separating the antenna from other electronics,
printing the antenna on a ex material and laminating it with the covering
adhesives. The dimension constraint was 30300.20.3mm for the Flex
76
design.
The 869MHz/915MHz ISM frequency band was selected for Europe/North
America, based on the regulations on SDRs in biotelemetry and the radio
frequency allocations in these two regions. The dimension of the antenna is
about 10 times smaller than one wavelength (34.5cm for 869MHz). How-
ever, since the radiation range of the antenna is only about 15cm 3m, a
lower radiation eciency is acceptable. It is still a challenge to make a com-
promise between the size and the radiation performance: too low eciency
will reduce the battery lifetime signicantly.
We rst studied the antennas at a high level and enumerated the char-
acteristics and the parameters that describe their performance. We then fo-
cused on the antennas potential for satisfying the design specications. With
the present thickness constraints, we considered only the antennas with pla-
nar structures. Therefore, the investigation narrowed to microstrip patch an-
tennas and the printed loop antennas. Antennas with dierent congurations
in these two categories were then characterized by both numerical estima-
tions and computer simulations. These estimations and simulations revealed
the performance of the antennas and their dependency on the geometry, the
feeding method, and substrate characteristics. Based on the estimation and
simulation results, a set of antennas revealing promising results were selected
and the designs were sent for manufacturing at the company PrintLine. The
antennas were of four basic types, dierentiated by implementation concept
and the existence of a ground plane in the design. PCB-A has a ground plane,
and PCB-B does not, both where built on PCB. Flex-A has a ground plane
and Flex-B does not, both where built on Flex material. Since the Flexprint
are normally ordered in large quantities, the antennas in Flex designs were
printed on a very thin (0.3mm) PCB instead.
Finally the antennas were assembled with coaxial cables and SMA con-
nectors, and tested with the 1-Port S
11
measurement in the frequency range
400MHz 2GHz by the network analyzer. The input reection coecient
was obtained by direct measurement, from which the impedance, return loss
77
and the VSWR of the antenna were calculated. Since these three parameters
are numerically related, we evaluated the antennas with a tolerance VSWR
value. Measurements were carried out on three antennas: (1) the 1020mm
PCB-B rectangular loop antenna, (2) the 30 30mm Flex-A ring microstrip
antenna, and (3) the 30 30mm Flex-B circular loop antenna. Each an-
tenna was measured under three cases: Case 1, the bare antenna; Case 2,
the antenna in parallel with the resonance capacitor; Case 3, the antenna
with the capacitor covered by a piece of adhesives and placed on the human
wrist. Case 2 is only possible to execute when the reactance of the antenna
is inductive. A resonance capacitor performs the simplest matching to tune
the antenna to the desired frequency. A more complicated matching network
will be necessary if the reactance of the antenna is capacitive, or the system
requires a perfect match. The PCB-B rectangular loop antenna was only
measured in Case 1 and Case 2, because the resonance capacitor broke be-
fore the experimental setup for Case 3 was complete, and no substitute was
available in the laboratory at that moment.
The tuned Flex-B circular loop antenna gave the best characteristics out
of the three tested antennas, with the VSWR value of 1.22 at 869MHz. The
tuned PCB-B rectangular loop antenna had a resonance peak at 869MHz,
and the VSWR was 2.6. At this stage, we set the tolerance value of VSWR
to be 3. Hence these two loop antennas passed the S
11
test. The Flex-A ring
microstrip antenna was not properly tuned to 869MHz, therefore the VSWR
was very large at that frequency. In general, since the loop antennas are in-
herently inductive, they are easier to tune. In addition, the loop antenna
with the bigger size performed better in the 1-Port S
11
measurement. The
microstrip antenna is inherently capacitive due to the capacitance between
the path and the groundplane. When the antenna has the patch pattern of
a ring, it needs a more complicated matching network, which is out of the
scope of this work.
Considering the results from Case 3, measurements made on the human
body gave the same eect of decreasing the return loss by 4 5dB and low-
ering the resonance frequency by 20 50MHz. More measurements should
78
be done to make more precise conclusions regarding the interaction between
the antenna and the human body.
This project was made in collaboration with the company Delta, and
the antennas were manufactured by the company PrintLine. Sometimes the
communication and interaction with the companies were time consuming and
often in the hands of a third party limiting my direct involvement and reduc-
ing the fraction of the project that was dedicated to experimentation. Parts
of the measurement were not carried out before handing in this thesis.
5.2 Future work
In order to complete the analysis, the remaining antennas should be tested
with the 1-Port S
11
measurement. For those antennas revealing good perfor-
mances during measurements, like the already measured 30 30mm Flex-B
circular loop antenna, should then be tested in the radiation pattern mea-
surement. Parameters like radiation pattern, radiation eciency, gain, direc-
tivity, etc. can be obtained from the radiation pattern measurement. With
these parameters we will be able to evaluate the antenna at a system level
in order to be sure that the antenna meets the radiation range and radiation
power constraints.
For small antennas, the range of the radiation pattern measurement
should be about one wavelength, which is 34.5cm in our case with the op-
erating frequency at 869MHz. It is more convenient to perform antenna
measurements with the test antenna in its receiving mode. The antenna
characteristics in the receiving mode are identical to those of the transmit-
ting mode due to reciprocity.
For those antennas that could not be tuned with a single capacitor, in
case a particular design is wanted, it is possible to design the matching circuit
for each specic antenna, test the input reection coecient in the 1-Port S
11
measurement, and sent the good ones for radiation pattern measurements.
79
To learn more about the human body and the antenna interaction, an-
tennas should be located in dierent part of the human body, and with the
body in dierent positions. For example, the wrist should be considered as a
nite substrate to our antennas while the chest can be seen as an innite one.
The adhesives may also have an inuence on the antenna performance as
they absorb water and salt. It will be interesting to see how the antenna per-
forms in dierent scenarios such as varying the wearing duration or varying
the subjects activity level (at rest versus during a session of sports) which
inuences sweat production.
Right now the antennas were designed as transmitting antennas. It is
possible to try designing the antenna as a transceiver, which will increase
the exibility and mobility in the WBSN.
If more than one antenna design pass the S
11
measurement as well as
the radiation pattern measurement, the compatibility of the antenna in the
entire on-the-body sensor conguration should be considered. The resonance
capacitor or the matching network can be integrated with other electronics in
the sensors. Again a compromise between size and eciency will be made to
keep the performance of the sensor satisfying with compact size, low power
consumption and low cost.
80
Bibliography
[1] The European table of frequency allocations and utilisations covering
the frequency range 9kHz to 275GHz, ERC, 2004
[2] US Frequency Allocation Chart, NTIA, 2003
[3] C.A. Balanis: Antenna theory: analysis and design, 2nd edition, Wiley,
1997, ISBN 0-471-59268-4
[4] I.J. Bahl, and P. Bhartia: Microstrip Antennas, Artech House, Dedham,
MA, 1980
[5] E.O. Hammerstad: Equations for Microstrip Circuit Design, Proc. Fifth
European Microwave Conf., pp. 268-272, September 1975.
[6] G.J. Monser: Antenna design : A practical design, McGraw-hill, 1996,
ISBN 0-07-042843-3
[7] G.A. Breed: Antenna design : A practical designAntenna Basics for
Wireless Communications, RF Design, October 1995
[8] J.V. Niekerk, F.L. Dacus, and S. Bible: Loop Antenna Basics and Reg-
ulation Compliance for Short-Range Radio, Microchip Technology Inc.
2002
[9] P.M. Evjen: AN003 SRD Antennas (Rev. 1.1), Chipcon AS, 2001-03-14
[10] Youbok Lee: AN710 Antenna Circuit Design for RFID Applications,
Microchip Technology Inc., 2003
81
[11] N.K. Nikolova: Lecture Notes of Modern Antennas in Wireless Telecom-
munications,
http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/faculty/georgieva/antennas.htm
[12] M.F. Iskander, Z. Yun and R. Quintero-Illera: Polarization and human
body eects on the microwave absorption in a human head exposed to ra-
diation from handheld devices, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory
and Techniques, vol. 48, Novermber, 2000
[13] G. Beke, A. H. Barrett, Electromagnetic Vibrations, Waves, and Ra-
diation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
[14] Isidor Nikolova, Curtis Nikolova, LLC: Near and Far Fields - From Stat-
ics to Radiation, http://www.conformity.com/0102reections.html
[15] D. Jeeries, Yagi-Uda antennas, http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/D.Jeeries
[16] C. Gabriel, S. Gabriel: Complilation of the dielectric properties
of body tissues at RF and microwave frequencies, Armstrong Lab.,
http://www.brooks.af.mil/AFRL/HED/hedr/reports/dielectric/home.html
[17] MAXRAD: Antenna Sales Bulletin, Terrawave Solutions
[18] G. Gonzalez: Microwave Transistor Ampliers Analysis and Design, 2nd
edition, Prentice Hall, 1997, ISBN 0-13-254335-4
[19] Guide to Greenpar

RF Connectors, http://www.anglia.com/
[20] Customer Drawing of SMA Straight Plug, Solder Pin, Crimp Attach-
ment RG316 for product 1-1478922-0, Tyco Electronics Corporation
[21] Network Analyzer Basics, Agilent Technologies, 2004
[22] Microwave101 encyclopedia, VSWR, P-N Designs, Inc.
[23] Guide given by Erik Bech from the High Frequency Lab in Delta
Antennas for body-worn appications:
82
[24] P. Salonen, M. Keskilammi, J. Rantanen, L. Syd anheimo: A Novel Blue-
tooth Antenna on Flexible substrate for Smart Clothing, IEEE Interna-
tional Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, e-Systems and
e-Man for Cybernetics in Cyberspace, Tucson, 2001
[25] P. Salonen, L. Syd anheimo, M. Keskilammi, M. Kivikoski: A Small
Planar Inverted-F Antenna for Wearable Applications, The Third Inter-
national Symposium on Wearable Computers, 1999.
[26] J. Kim, Y. Rahmat-Samii: Implanted Antennas inside a Human Body:
Simulations, Designs, and Characterizations, IEEE Transactions on Mi-
crowave Theory and Techniques, vol. 52, no. 8, August 2004
[27] J. Kim, Y. Rahmat-Samii: Low-prole Antennas for Implantable Medical
Devices: Optimized Designs for Antennas/Human Interactions, IEEE 0-
7803-8302-8/04, 2004
[28] M. Salah Karoui, H. Ghariani, M. Samet: Study and Design of A Loop
Antenna for Application of Medical Telemetry, IEEE International Con-
ference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2004
[29] W. Scanlon, N. Evans, J. Burns: FDTD Analysis of Close-coupled
418MHz Radiating Devices for Human Biotelemetry, Physics in
Medicine and Biology, 1999
[30] T. Fukasawa, M. Ohtsuka, Y. Sunahara, S. Makino: The Wide
Bandwidth Monopole Antenna using Human Body as a Ground Plane,
Communication Society Conference of IEICE, 2003
Antenna simulations softwares:
[31] W7EL: EZNEC Antenna Software, http://www.eznec.com/
[32] Evaluation software: IE3D v11, Zeland software, Inc.,
http://www.zeland.com/
[33] IE3D Users Manual, Zeland software, Inc., Fremont, CA, Feb., 2005
83
Appendix A
Simulation plots
Microstrip patch antennas with dierent patch geometries, feeding tech-
niques, and substrates modeled in IE3D V11 simulation software.
84
Figure A.1: The microstrip dipole antenna, probe fed.
Figure A.2: The square patch antenna, probe fed.
85
Figure A.3: The square patch antenna, 4 probes fed.
Figure A.4: The rectangular patch antenna, probe fed.
86
Figure A.5: The rectangular patch antenna, 4 probes fed.
Figure A.6: The circular patch antenna, probe fed.
87
Figure A.7: The ring patch antenna, probe fed.
Figure A.8: The square spiral patch antenna, 4 quarters, probe fed.
88
Figure A.9: The square spiral patch antenna, 6 quarters, probe fed.
Figure A.10: The Octagonal spiral patch antenna, 10 quarters, probe fed.
89
Figure A.11: The square patch antenna, substrate
r
= 11.9, h = 0.5mm.
Figure A.12: The square patch antenna, substrate
r
= 11.9, h = 1.5mm.
90
Figure A.13: The square patch antenna, substrate
r
= 11.9, h = 4mm.
Figure A.14: The square patch antenna, substrate
r
= 3, h = 4mm.
91
Figure A.15: The square patch antenna, substrate
r
= 10.2, h = 4 + 4mm.
Figure A.16: The rectangular patch antenna, substrate
r
= 10.2, h = 4 + 4mm.
92