A Half-Mode SIW Cavity-Backed Semi-Hexagonal Slot Antenna for WBAN Application

ABSTRACT

A half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) antenna covering industrial, scientific, and medical radio band at 5.8 GHz is designed, fabricated, and tested. An HMSIW technique is used to reduce the size to almost 50% while maintaining the same performance of the antenna. Afterwards, a semi-hexagonal slot is etched on the patch, which excites and tunes the dominant-mode of the cavity in the band of interest. Inspite of a substantial miniaturization, the proposed antenna provides a gain of 6.1 $\mathrm{dBi}$with front to back ratio of more than 10 dB along with a fair radiation efficiency of 83% in free space. In order to examine the performance of the antenna in the presence of a body, the antenna is tested on pork tissues. The measured on-body peak gain and simulated radiation efficiency are obtained as 5.25 $\mathrm{dBi}$ and 69%, respectively. The antenna shows robust performance in the presence of pork tissues and the specific absorption rate value is under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) guidelines, which makes it a suitable choice for wireless body area network applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW)
• Specific absorption rate (SAR)
• Voxel body model
• Wireless body area network

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Divya Chaturvedi

Divya Chaturvedi was born in Kanpur, India. She received her BTech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, India and MTech degree in Electronics Engineering from Pondicherry Central University, India. She is working currently towards PhD degree in the area of substrate integrated waveguide antenna for medical applications at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. Her area of research involves substrate integrated waveguide, microwave integrated circuits, metamaterial, and biological effects of radiation on the human body.

Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected], www.nitt.edu

S. Raghavan

S. Raghavan has 34 years of experience in teaching and research at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India as a senior professor. He received his UG degree in ECE from the College of Engineering, Guindy, PG degree in the specialization of microwave engineering from the College of Engineering, Trivandrum. He completed his Doctoral programme in the field of microwave integrated circuits from I.I.T. Delhi, India under the guidance of Prof. Bharathi Bhat and Prof. S. K. Koul. He is a senior member of IEEE in MTT and EMBS, life fellow in BES, fellow in IETE and IE, life member in ISSS, MRSI, ISTE, electromagnetic interference (EMI) /electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), IELTS, and ILA. He is the referee for MTT journal. His research interest includes microwave/millimetre-wave circuits and devices, microwave integrated circuits, antennas, EMI/EMC, computational electromagnetics, radio frequency (RF)/ biomedical microelectromechanical systems (Bio-MEMS) metamaterials, and microwaves in biomedical applications. He has contributed more than 50 papers in international, national journals and 150 papers in international conferences including IEEE Explore proceedings.

E-mail: [email protected]