A Miniaturized Design of Dual-band Antenna for Bidirectional Brain Machine Interface Applications

Abstract

A novel miniaturized printed monopole antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) bidirectional brain machine interface (Bi-BMI) applications, based on defected feed line and parasitic structures, is designed and tested. The proposed antenna structure consists of a rectangular radiating patch and two inverted L-shaped slots located in the transition distance between patch and feed line, with a meander line parasitic structure in which a resonance frequency with narrow bandwidth nearly to 2.4 GHz and a running fractional bandwidth of more than 100% are provided (3.19–10.63 GHz). Inserting a meander line parasitic structure caused the antenna to resonate in 2.4 lower frequency bands in order to transfer controlling command in BMI application. In addition, by inserting a pair of inverted slots on the feed line and radiating patch’s corners, an excitation has been taken further in the resonance; therefore, a much wider impedance bandwidth is possible to be processed. To illustrate the usefulness of the proposed antenna for BMI applications, the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) distribution, one of the most important characteristics in the implanted sensors, in the mode of an implanted antenna inside the full head voxel model, under Dura matter, and external antenna with the distance of 20 cm from the implanted antenna, is presented. The proposed antenna has great radiation characteristics, such as very low SAR, high fidelity and almost omnidirectional radiation patterns over the whole band.

KEYWORDS:

• Bidirectional brain machine interface (Bi-BMI)
• Meander line parasitic structure and a pair of inverted L-shaped slots
• Printed monopole antenna
• Specific absorption rate (SAR)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sh. Yazdanifard

Sh Yazdanifard received the MSc degree in telecommunication and electrical engineering from Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University of Tehran, Iran in 2011. He has extensive experience from engineering and managing a variety of telecommunication projects. He is currently pursuing the PhD degree in the Khaje Nassir Toosi, University of Technology and his main research has focused on channel estimation and the development of SAR-less of a novel design and fabrication of a multiband UWB antenna with enhanced radiation characteristic for the brain-machine interface applications. His research interests include numerical techniques in electromagnetic/UWB transceivers/microwave passive and active circuits/wireless power delivery for wireless communication systems.

R. A. Sadeghzadeh

R A Sadeghzadeh received his BSc in telecommunication engineering from the Khajeh Nassir Toosi, University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1984 and his MSc degree in digital communications engineering from the University of Bradford and UMIST, UK, as a joint program in 1987. He received his PhD from the University of Bradford, UK, in 1990. Between 1990 and 1997, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the field of propagation, bio-medical and wireless communications. From 1984 to 1985 he was working in the electronics team at Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) as a networker. Currently, Dr Sadeghzadeh is a professor of telecommunication and electrical engineering at KN Toosi University of Technology (KNTU). Since 1997 he has been professor. He has published over 120 papers in international journals and conferences. His research interests are in the field of numerical techniques in electromagnetic, antenna, propagation, radio networks, and wireless networks. Email: [email protected]