Dual Circularly Polarized Textile Antenna with Dual Bands and On-/Off-Body Communication Modes for Multifunctional Wearable Devices

A circularly polarized (CP) textile antenna is investigated for concurrent on- and off-body wireless communications in the 2.38 GHz medical body area network and 5.8 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical bands in the wireless body area network. The proposed scheme consists of a square microstrip patch antenna (MPA), in which four shorting pins are employed to tune the two resonate modes of TM10 and TM00. Notably, the slant corners on MPA are cut symmetrically to realize unidirectional CP radiation, enabling off-body communication. Moreover, four rotating L-shaped parasite elements are loaded to excite the horizontal polarization mode (TMhp), which is combined with the TM00 mode to implement CP omnidirectional radiation along the human body. For verification, a proof-of-concept prototype with the dimensions of 45 mm × 45 mm × 2 mm was fabricated and characterized. The measured −10 dB impedance bandwidths of 2.5% and 6.7%, the 3 dB AR bandwidths of 2.5% and 2.7%, and the maximum realized gains of −2.8 and 6.8 dBic are achieved in dual bands, respectively. The experimental tests, such as human body loading, structural deformation, and humidity variation, were carried out. In addition, the wireless communication capability was measured and the radiation safety is evaluated. These performances show that the proposed antenna is an appropriate choice for multifunctional wearable applications.