Flexible and Beam Steerable Planar UWB Quasi-Yagi Antenna for WBAN

Abstract

An Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) Quasi Yagi antenna with beam steering property is reported in this paper for Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) application. The proposed antenna has a driver dipole, micro-strip line to slot-line transition and four parasitic strips printed on a very thin substrate of thickness 0.2 mm. The coplanar strip-line (CPS) is used to connect the driver dipole to the slot-line. The proposed antenna has an improved bandwidth of 7.4 GHz along with unidirectional radiation pattern. The parasitic strips act as directors to attain high gain of 7.8 dBi with better directionality. The flexible and compact geometry with footprint of 34 mm × 30 mm makes the antenna suitable for body worn devices. Further to improve the communication between the sensor and the cluster node in WBAN, design of two element antenna array with footprint of 34 mm x 52.3 mm, is constructed to achieve beam steering and the performance metrics are evaluated. The proposed flexible antenna offers large gain and high impedance bandwidth simultaneously. The prototype of the simulated antenna is fabricated and the simulation results are validated using experimental measurements. The measurement and simulation results are found in good agreement.

KEYWORDS:

• Wireless body area networks
• Ultra-wide band
• Thin substrate
• Quasi-Yagi antenna
• Beam steering
• Unidirectional radiation pattern

Additional information

Funding

This project is supported by DST-SERB under Core Research Grant (Grant No.: EMR/2017/01521).

Notes on contributors

Veeraselvam Aruna

V Aruna obtained her BE degree in electronics and instrumentation engineering and ME degree from Anna University Chennai, India. She is currently a PhD scholar at SSN College of Chennai, India.Email: [email protected]

Mohammed Gulam Nabi Alsath

M Gulam Nabi Alsath, obtained his BE, and ME, degree from Anna University, Chennai. He received his PhD degree from Anna University for his research work on automotive antennas. He currently serves as an associate professor in the Department of ECE, SSN, Chennai, India. His research interests include microwave components and circuits, antenna engineering, signal integrity analysis and solutions to EMI problems. Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Savarimuthu Kirubaveni

S Kirubaveni obtained her BE, and ME, degree from Anna University, Chennai, India. She currently serves as an associate professor in the Department of ECE, SSN, Chennai, India. She has 7 years of teaching and research experience. Her research interests include MEMS and NEMS device design and VLSI design. She currently involved in the growth of ZnO nanorods for piezoelectric energy harvester and gas sensor applications. She is an active life member in IETE.Email: [email protected]

Marimuthu Maheswari

M Maheswari obtained her BE degree in electronics and communication engineering from Anna University Chennai. She is currently an ME, student at SSN College of Engineering, Chennai, India.Email: [email protected]