An 868 MHz Bandage Type Antenna using Aluminum conductor and PDMS substrate

This paper presents an 868 MHz ultra-high frequency (UHF) bandage-type antenna for wireless body sensor network applications. The proposed antenna has a modified planar rectangular patch antenna topology and is realized using aluminum metalization and a flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. The performance characteristics of the antenna have been investigated through electromagnetic simulations and measurements on a human body phantom arm. The proposed antenna achieves a bandwidth of 11 MHz which is 57 % wider than the required bandwidth for the European LoRaWAN 868 MHz band operation. When compared to bandage-type Sub-GHz antennas reported in the literature, the proposed antenna exhibits desired gain and efficiency performance. Furthermore, the developed antenna demonstrates a low 10-g averaged SAR figure of 0.82 W/kg when 25 mW input power is supplied. The achieved impedance and radiation characteristics make the proposed antenna suitable for a wide range of body-worn wireless health monitoring applications.