A novel liquid antenna for wearable bio-monitoring applications

Abstract

The performance of the most commonly used metal antennas close to the human body is one of the limiting factors of the performance of bio-sensors and wireless body area networks (WBAN). Due to the high dielectric and conductivity contrast with respect to most parts of the human body (blood, skin, …), the range of most of the wireless sensors operating in RF and microwave frequencies is limited to 1–2 cm when attached to the body. In this paper, we introduce the very novel idea of liquid antennas, that is based on engineering the properties of liquids. This approach allows for the improvement of the range by a factor of 5–10 in a very easy-to-realize way, just modifying the salinity of the aqueous solution of the antenna. A similar methodology can be extended to the development of liquid RF electronics for implantable devices and wearable real-time bio-signal monitoring, since it can potentially lead to very flexible antenna and electronic configurations.