volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

The field of wireless body area networks (WBAN) has seen growing interest in recent years due to applications of wearable devices, such as in healthcare. Effective on-body antenna design is necessary to provide optimal performance in real-world scenarios. This study compares several wearable antenna types, which are the monopole, patch, and e-textile antennas, to determine how human body motion affects antenna performance using a human body phantom model and human volunteers. The monopole antenna overall outperforms the patch antenna at 915 MHz and the e-textile antenna at 2.45 GHz and a Weibull distribution can be used as a probability distribution for S₂₁ during an arm swing motion for all antenna types tested.

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Dr. George Lee

Dr. Daniel Ugochukwu Agu

Dr. Brian Garner

Dr. Yang Li