A High-Fidelity All-Textile UWB Antenna With Low Back Radiation for Off-Body WBAN Applications

TLDR

The paper presents a novel all‑textile UWB antenna featuring a full ground plane and high on‑body fidelity. The antenna employs a multilayered design with two patches and a full ground plane on two 2‑mm‑thick substrate layers to reduce backward radiation and maintain high fidelity. Measurements confirm operation across the FCC UWB band (3.1–10.6 GHz) with on‑body fidelity of 95–97 % at 1 m, demonstrating suitability for body‑worn UWB impulse radio.

Abstract

A novel all-textile UWB antenna with full-ground plane and high on-body fidelity is presented in this work. Due to the combined requirements of backward radiation reduction in WBANs and high-fidelity prerequisite for UWB pulse transmission/reception, a multilayered structure is implemented. The structure consists of two patches and a ground plane implemented on two layers of 2-mm-thick substrate. The full ground plane on the lower layer shields users against on-body radiation. Numerical and experimental evaluations both in free space and on human body prove the antenna operation within the FCC UWB bandwidth of 3.1–10.6 GHz. Its high-measured on-body system fidelity values of between 95% and 97% at a distance of 1 m show that the textile UWB antenna is suitable for body-worn UWB impulse radio communication.