Wearable dual‐band dual‐polarized screen‐printed fabric antenna enabled with electromagnetic bandgap structure for ISM and WLAN communications.

Summary A wearable dual‐band dual‐polarized fabric antenna is screen printed on a cotton polyester substrate to operate at the industrial scientific and medical band at 2.45 GHz and wireless local area network at 5.2 GHz. A rectangular slot with a pair of L‐shaped branches are used to excite dual bands. The rectangular slot is used to achieve lower band resonance at 2.45 GHz with linear polarization, and an L‐shaped branch with a stub is used to obtain the circular polarization at 5.2 GHz. A 3 × 3 electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is enabled behind the antenna to minimize the back radiation and specific absorption rate (SAR). The antenna provides a measured impedance bandwidth (BW) of 25% from 2.1 to 2.7 GHz (600 MHz), and 18% from 4.5 to 5.7 GHz (1.2 GHz), respectively. The antenna also has a 3‐dB axial ratio BW of 15% from 4.6 to 5.35 GHz (750 MHz). The antenna exhibits a measured gain of 5.1 dB at 5.2 GHz and 6.4 dB at 2.45 GHz. The SAR is validated by using a CST (computer simulation technology) voxel human body model and found to be 0.0949 and 0.127 W/kg for 1 g tissue at 5.2 and 2.45 GHz, respectively. The dimension of the proposed EBG integrated antenna is (0.52 <italic>λ</italic> × 0.52 <italic>λ</italic> × 0.07 <italic>λ</italic>). The antenna and EBG structure are screen printed with silver conductive ink, which provides good conductivity, conformability, comfort, wearability, and being lightweight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]