The Design of Miniaturized Wearable Circularly Polarized Dielectric Resonator Antenna

Abstract

The evolution of Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is made possible due to the rapid growth of wireless network and constant miniaturization of electrical devices. However, designing an antenna that is suitable for WBAN applications is challenging as the antenna should has compact size, in addition to the ability to endure low power loss during transmission and has robust communication link. Thus, a miniaturized wearable Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA) capable of radiating circularly polarized (CP) wave is designed. The antenna designing is done by using CST software. A total of 140 simulations is simulated in order to obtain the desired results. The DRA is used, together with conformal copper strips and miniaturized copper ground plane. The single point fed antenna is excited by a unique capital F-shaped conformal copper strips. The CP DRA offers a simulated Axial Ratio bandwidth below 3dB of ~23.85%, which is much greater than what has been reported in the previous work, with bandwidth of S11 below −10dB ~ 16.066%. In addition, the antenna designed in this research project managed to achieve an overlapped bandwidth of ~14.10% (6.9GHz – 7.94GHz). A prototype antenna is fabricated to validate the simulation result. Thus, the antenna design in this research will be helpful towards the evolution of the WBAN.