Conformal Magnetic Composite RFID for Wearable RF and Bio-Monitoring Applications

©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.10.1109/TMTT.2008.2006810This paper introduces for the first time a novel flexible magnetic composite material for RF identification (RFID) and wearable RF antennas. First, one conformal RFID tag working at 480 MHz is designed and fabricated as a benchmarking prototype and the miniaturization concept is verified. Then, the impact of the material is thoroughly investigated using a hybrid method involving electromagnetic and statistical tools. Two separate statistical experiments are performed, one for the analysis of the impact of the relative permittivity and permeability of the proposed material and the other for the evaluation of the impact of the dielectric and magnetic loss on the antenna performance. Finally, the effect of the bending of the antenna is investigated, both on the S-parameters and on the radiation pattern. The successful implementation of the flexible magnetic composite material enables the significant miniaturization of RF passives and antennas in UHF frequency bands, especially when conformal modules that can be easily fine-tuned are required in critical biomedical and pharmaceutical applications

Wearable, small, and robust: the circular quarter-mode textile antenna

A miniaturized wearable antenna, entirely implemented in textile materials, is proposed that relies on a quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide topology. The design combines compact dimensions with high body-antenna isolation, making it excellently suited for off-body communication in wearable electronics/smart textile applications. The fabricated antenna achieves stable on-body performance. A measured on-body impedance matching bandwidth of 5.1% is obtained, versus 4.8% in free space. The antenna gain equals 3.8 dBi in the on-body and 4.2 dBi for the free-space scenario. High radiation efficiency, measured to be 81% in free space, is combined with a low calculated specific absorption rate of 0.45 mW/g, averaged over 1 g of tissue, with 500 mW input power

Miniaturized top-metallized rectangular dielectric resonator antenna

In this paper, a modal analysis of a rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (DRA), with unconventional boundary conditions, is carried out. Analytical equations of the fields inside the resonator and simulations are presented, showing that if a resonator is mounted over a ground plane and loaded by a top metallic sheet, there is a miniaturization of the electric size of the new antenna, without significant deterioration of performance. Furthermore, dual-band responses can be achieved with this configuration.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Estimation of dielectric constant for various standard materials using microstrip ring resonator

Microstrip ring resonator (MRR) is known for dielectric constant determination and many studies used Teflon as a standard sample. However, there are many other materials available which able to perform better or equivalence as the Teflon in calibrating certain dielectric constant measurement. This paper presents simulation of the MRR to investigate frequency shift of materials for dielectric constant estimation using the CST STUDIO SUITE 2016 software. The MRR was designed on RT/Duroid®5880 substrate (εr = 2.2, tanδ = 0.0004) with 50 Ω matching impedance where microstrip width, substrate thickness and ring mean radius were 4.893, 1.575 and 14 mm, respectively to resonate at 2.65340 GHz. Teflon, Polyimide, Isola FR408, Arlon AD250, Arlon AD270 and Gil GML1032 were alternately selected to be placed on top of the MRR as a standard sample to obtain the frequency shift. The frequency shifts for the above materials were 2.56932, 2.46149, 2.44680, 2.53748, 2.52007 and 2.48608 GHz, correspondingly. The differences in frequency shift were used in NetBeans IDE 8.1 algorithm of Java for dielectric constant calculation. The results indicated that Polyimide and Arlon AD250 had the lowest and highest mean percentage error of 0.83536 and 1.76505 %, respectively. Hence, Polyimide might as well be the most suitable candidate as a standard sample in MRR technique for dielectric constant measurement

MAC-Oriented Programmable Terahertz PHY via Graphene-based Yagi-Uda Antennas

Graphene is enabling a plethora of applications in a wide range of fields due to its unique electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. In the realm of wireless communications, graphene shows great promise for the implementation of miniaturized and tunable antennas in the terahertz band. These unique advantages open the door to new reconfigurable antenna structures which, in turn, enable novel communication protocols at different levels of the stack. This paper explores both aspects by, first, presenting a terahertz Yagi-Uda-like antenna concept that achieves reconfiguration both in frequency and beam direction simultaneously. Then, a programmable antenna controller design is proposed to expose the reconfigurability to the PHY and MAC layers, and several examples of its applicability are given. The performance and cost of the proposed scheme is evaluated through full-wave simulations and comparative analysis, demonstrating reconfigurability at nanosecond granularity with overheads below 0.02 mm$^{2}$ and 0.2 mW.Comment: Accepted for presentation in IEEE WCNC '1

The next generation textile antennas based on substrate integrated waveguide technology

Textile antennas for body-worn applications have some very specific requirements and needs. From an electrical engineer's point of view, good radiation characteristics and impedance matching to the active electronics are important. From the wearer's perspective, the antenna should be unobtrusively integrated into the clothing, and the smart textile comfortable to wear. New techniques offer the potential to fulfill these different needs. One new approach consists of applying metalized eyelets to implement substrate integrated waveguide technology on textile materials. This results in high-performance on-body antennas with excellent behavior in close proximity of the human body. Two realizations are discussed: a wideband design and a miniaturized half mode substrate integrated waveguide dual-band design. Both yield excellent free-space and on-body performance, and superb antenna-body isolation, automatically resulting in very robust characteristics when deployed on-body

Male antene: postupci smanjivanja izmjera i primjene

The paper presents research results in the field of small antennas obtained at the Department of Wireless Communications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb. A study comparing the application of several miniaturization techniques on a shorted patch antenna is presented. Single and dual band shorted patch antennas with notches and/or slot are introduced. A PIFA designed for application in mobile GSM terminals is described. The application of stacked shorted patches as array elements for a mobile communication base station as well as for electromagnetic field sensor is presented. The design of single and dual band folded monopoles is described. Prototypes of the presented antennas have been manufactured and their characteristics were verified by measurements.U radu su prikazani rezultati istraživanja u području malih antena ostvareni na Zavodu za Radiokomunikacije, Sveučilišta u Zagrebu Fakulteta elektrotehnike i računarstva. Prikazana je primjena više postupaka za smanjivanje izmjera skraćene mikrotrakaste antene. Opisane su izvedbe skraćenih mikrotrakastih antena s urezima i prorezom za rad u jednom i u dva frekvencijska područja. Prikazana je izvedba planarne invertirane F-antene (PIFA) za primjenu u ručnim terminalima sustava pokretnih komunikacija GSM. Višeslojne skraćene mikrotrakaste antene uporabljene su za izvedbu antenskog niza za baznu postaju sustava pokretnih komunikacija te kao elementi osjetila za mjerenje jakosti elektromagnetskog polja. Prikazana je izvedba savijenih monopolnih antena za rad u jednom te u dva frekvencijska pojasa. Izrađeni su prototipovi opisanih antena i mjerenjima su ispitane njihove osobine