Metamaterial-Based Wearable Staircase Ultra-Wideband Antenna for WBAN and Breast Imaging Applications

Tale Saeidi*, Idris Ismail, Adam R.H. Alhawari, Sarmad Nozad Mahmood, Sameer Alani

Abstract

The proposed wearable antenna should have flexible, planar, and low-profile structure in order to fulfill the wearable antennas requirements applying for both wireless area body network and breast cancer imaging. The proposed wearable antenna consists of a layer of denim (11×11 mm²) as substate and Shieldit conductive material. The antenna is combined with eighteen metamaterial (MTM) unit cells consuming an altered rectangular split ring resonator (SRR) to expand BW, increase the directive gain, and maintain the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) value below 2 W/Kg. It works within a frequency range of 5.2-22.2 GHz and offers a maximum directive gain of 5.85 and radiation efficiency of more than 78%. The outcomes proved that only a little discrepancy exists between the simulated and measured results of the proposed antenna. Besides, it shows that the antenna elements can detect tumor with radius of 2 mm in a breast with maximum diameter of 320 mm. The results credibly demonstrated the ability of the proposed wearable UWB antenna system for both wireless body area network (WBAN) and breast cancer imaging applications.