2012 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference 12 - 13 November 2012, Loughborough, UK

Miniaturised UWB Antenna for a Wireless Body

Area Network
H.I.Hraga, C.H.See, R.A.Abd-Alhameed and Neil J. McEwan

Antennas and Applied Electromagnetics Research Group, School of Engineering Design and Technology, University
of Bradford, Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom, BD7 1DP.
h.i.hraga@bradford.ac.uk, c.h.see2@bradford.ac.uk, r.a.abd@bradford.ac.uk, n.j.mcewan@bradford.ac.uk

Abstract — A miniaturised modified planar inverted-F
UWB antenna with a broadband rectangular feeding
structure, for a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), is
proposed. The antenna is designed to cover a wide
frequency range from 3 GHz to 13 GHz. Details of the
proposed antenna design and measured results are
presented and discussed. To validate the results, a
prototype was fabricated and tested. The measured and
computed results are in good agreement. The overall size of
the antenna including the ground plane is 50 mm × 50 mm
× 8 mm, making it suitable to fit into a standard enclosure
of a UWB wireless transceiver.
keywords — UWB antenna, Wireless Body Area Network.
typically 4-12% impedance bandwidth is achievable in an
unmodified design. Many bandwidth enhancement methods
have been proposed to overcome this deficiency. These
methods include adding T-slot geometries [2], the introduction
of parasitic elements such as the inverted-L [3, 4], modified
ground planes [5, 6] and modifications to the feeding and
shorting plates [7, 8].
In this paper, a new small antenna design for a UWB-
WBAN system is studied and investigated. The antenna is
formed by a rectangular top plate, shorting wall, rectangular
feeding plate, a parasitic plate and a finite ground plane. To
evaluate the performance of the antenna when it is placed next
to the human body, a simulated model was constructed to
analyze this scenario.

I. INTRODUCTION

When the Federal Communication Commission (FCC)

released the ultra-wideband (UWB) frequency spectrum from
3.1 to 10.6 GHz in 2002, this opened tremendous business
opportunities for mobile/wireless transceiver manufacturers to
update their products by incorporating ultra-wideband (UWB)
technology. This technology is designed for communication
systems with a short range (~10m), low emitted power (<-41.3
dBm/MHz) and high data rate (>500Mbps). UWB technology
holds great promise for a vast array of new applications that (a)
have the potential to provide significant benefits for public
safety, businesses and consumers, in a variety of applications
such as radar imaging of objects buried under ground or behind
walls, and short-range, high data rate wireless body area
networks (WBAN).
The UWB systems require antennas having a
correspondingly broad bandwidth [1]. To make UWB systems
competitive with other narrow band communication systems,
UWB antennas with compact size, wide impedance bandwidth
and consistent omni-directional radiation patterns are in
unabated demand.
It is well known that the conventional planar inverted-F (b)
Antenna (PIFA) is a good candidate for mobile handheld
Figure 1: Proposed antenna structure. (a) top view, (b) 3D
devices. However, this antenna has bandwidth constraints;

978-1-4673-2220-1/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

2012 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference 12 - 13 November 2012, Loughborough, UK

II. ANTENNA DESIGN CONCEPT AND STRUCTURE

Fig. 1. shows the geometry of the antenna. This is

constructed from four metal plates, comprising the top plate
(20 x 10mm2), shorting wall (5 x 7.5 mm2), feeding plate (14 x
6.75 mm2) and parasitic plate (8 x 5.5mm2), as shown in Fig.1.
An optimum feeding gap of 0.75 mm is used to excite the
antenna for the best impedance matching. An off-centre
feeding method is also introduced in order to widen the
impedance bandwidth. By carefully optimizing the geometry
parameters, i.e. the dimensions of all the plates, the feeding
gap, feeding position and the position of the parasitic plate, the
wide impedance bandwidth can be achieved. (a)
A parametric study has been carried out to optimize the
impedance matching of the proposed antenna over the
frequency band of interest from 3 GHz to 13 GHz. The feed
pin position (fp), the distance between the feed plate and
parasitic plate (d), and the ground plane size were considered
to be the most sensitive parameters to control the impedance
bandwidth. Therefore, these parameters were considered for
this analysis.
The position of the feed point (fp) determines the impedance
matching over the higher usable frequency band. The effect of
varying the position of the feed point from 4.75 to 7.75 mm in
1mm steps is illustrated in Fig. 2(a). As can be seen from this
figure, when fp is set at 4.75mm, 5.75mm and 6.75mm the
target frequency range would not be obtained. However, the (b)
antenna will achieve the target frequency range when fp set at
7.75 mm (i.e. close to the middle of the plate).
The effect of the position (d) of the additional rectangular
plate is also important for the impedance matching over the
FCC required UWB band. This is because its variation can
introduce different excitation modes to the antenna, as
indicated in Fig. 2(b). It is clearly seen, when this plate is 7
mm away from the shorting pin metal, the antenna shows an
obvious wide bandwidth with good impedance matching,
which completely covers the targeted band from 3.1 to 10.6
GHz.
The effects of the ground plane size on the reflection
coefficient |S11| were also investigated parametrically, as (c)
presented in Fig. 2(c). The physical dimensions of the ground Figure 2: Simulated reflection coefficients |S11| with variation of different
plane were scaled in terms of λ0, the wavelength corresponding parameters: (a) feeding position fp, (b) position of the additional rectangular
plate d and (c) ground plane size
to the lowest resonant frequency of the structure. The response
was analysed for four different ground plane sizes: 25 mm × 25
mm (≅ 0.25λo× 0.25λo), 50mm x 50mm (≅ 0.5λo× 0.5λo), 75 III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
mm x 75mm (≅ 0.75λo× 0.75λo), and 100mm x 100mm
(≅λo×λo), where λo is set at 3 GHz. As can be clearly noticed, To validate the simulated results, an antenna prototype was
the antenna with ground plane dimensions larger than fabricated, as shown in Fig. 3. The simulated reflection
0.5λ0×0.5λ0 will have a better impedance matching over the coefficient of the reference model and the measured reflection
required UWB band, while further reducing this ground plane coefficient of the physical prototype are compared in Fig. 4. As
size to 0.25λ0×0.25λ0 will deteriorate the impedance can be observed, the simulated and measured |S11| are in
bandwidth at lower usable frequency band. The 50mm x 50mm satisfactory agreement, and both of them encompass the
ground plane is clearly optimum at the lower band edge. frequency band from 3 GHz-13 GHz for the performance
criterion |S11| <-10 dB. Some small discrepancies between the
simulated and measured results can be attributed to the
fabrication errors.

978-1-4673-2220-1/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

2012 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference 12 - 13 November 2012, Loughborough, UK

Figure 5: Simulated gain of the proposed antenna

Figure 3: Prototype of the proposed antenna

Figure 6: Proposed antenna in the centre of the body model

Figure 4: simulated and measured reflection coefficients |S11| of the proposed

antenna
Table I
RADIATION EFFICIENCY (Rad.Eff.) AND SAR VALUES
(NORMALIZED TO 1 W)
Fig. 5. shows the simulated peak gain of the proposed antenna
across the frequency range between 3 GHz and 10.6 GHz it Three Layers Body model
can be seen that the maximum simulated gain over the Body to 1mm 5mm
frequency range is 7.2dBi and the minimum is 2dBi. ground plane
distance
To comprehend the antenna performance when it is placed in
proximity to a human body model, a simulated body model f (GHz) Rad SAR10g Rad SAR10g
has been set up. A three-layer body model as in [9] is adopted Eff(%) (w/kg) Eff(%) (w/kg)
in this study. This consists of skin, fat and muscle. The antenna 3 40% 10.5 48% 6.5
is placed in the centre of the body model with the ground plane 6 70% 5.8 76% 2
facing the surface of the model and at two different proximity 9 89% 1 90% 0.7
distances, 1 mm and 5 mm as shown in Fig.6. The radiation
efficiency and peak Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) are
presented in Table I at three frequencies, 3GHz, 6GHz and
Fig. 7. depicts simulated radiation patterns of the proposed
9GHz. (SEMCAD X software [10] was used in this analysis.)
antenna. Two pattern cuts (x-z, y-z planes) are shown, each
pattern presented in terms of co-polar and cross-polar
components. The patterns as shown below were taken at three
frequencies of 3 GHz, 6 GHz and 9 GHz that are representative
of the designated UWB bandwidth.

978-1-4673-2220-1/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

2012 Loughborough Antennas & Propagation Conference 12 - 13 November 2012, Loughborough, UK
[2] K.L. Chung, W.Y. Tam, H.K. Kan, “A Compact Wideband PIFA”,
Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Vol. 51, No.11, pp.
2554-2556, Nov. 2009.
[3] H.T. Chattha, Y. Huang, M.K. Ishfaq, S.J. Boyes "Bandwidth
enhancement techniques for planar inverted-F antenna" IET
Microwave Antennas Propag, Vol. 5,Iss.15, pp. 1872-1879, June.
2011.
[4] C.H. See, R. A. Abd-Alhameed, H.I. Hraga, M. M. Abusitta, I. T. E.
Elfergani, S. Adnan "Design of a PIFA with Parasitic F-element
miniaturised antenna assembly for Lower Band Ultra-wideband and
IEEE 802.11a applications" MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL
TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 9, September 2011.
[5] M.-C. Huynh and W. Stutzman, "Ground Plane Effects on Planar
(a) inverted-F antenna (PIFA) Performance", IEE Proc. Microwaves,
Antennas and Propagation, vol. 150, pp. 209-213, August 2003
[6] I. J. G. Zuazola and J.C. Batchelor, “Compact multiband PIFA type
antenna”, Electronics Letters, Vol. 45, No. 15, pp. 768-769, July
2009.
[7] H.T. Chattha, Y. Huang and Y. Lu, “PIFA Bandwidth Enhancement
by Changing the Widths of Feed and Shorting Plates”, IEEE Antennas
and Wireless Propagation Letters, Vol. 8, pp. 637-640, 2009.
[8] R. Feick, H. Carrasco, M. Olmos and H.D. Hristov, “PIFA input
bandwidth enhancement by changing feed plate silhouette”,
Electronics Letters, vol. 40, pp. 921-922, July 2004.
[9] M. Klemm, I. Z. Kovcs, G.F. Pedersen and G. Troster, “Novel Small-
Size Directional Antenna for UWB WBAN/WPAN Applications,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propagation, vol.503, no.12, pp.3884-
(b) 3896, Dec. 2005
[10] SEMCAD X Electromagnetic Simulation Software, Schmid & Partner
Engineering AG, Zurich, Switzerland [Online] Available:
www.speag.com/products/semcad

(c)

Figure 7: simulated radiation patterns for two planes (left: x-z plane, right: y-z
plane); at (a) 3000 MHz, (b) 6000 MHz and (c) 9000 MHz: ‘___’ cross
polarisation and‘----’ co-polarisation

IV. CONCLUSION

A planar UWB antenna with an optimized size of 50 x 50 x

8 mm3 for a wireless body area network was studied and
investigated in this paper. The proposed design covers an even
wider frequency spectrum from 3 to 13 GHz. To validate the
computed results, a prototype design has been manufactured
and tested. Both measured and computed results show a good
agreement in terms of reflection coefficient. The simulated far
field radiation patterns and gains were also plotted to further
confirm its radiation type. These attractive features make the
antenna a very promising candidate for UWB applications.

REFERENCES
[1] K.L.Chung, W.Y.Tam and H.K.Kan, “A compact wideband PIFA”,
Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, vol.51, pp.2554-56,
November 2009.

978-1-4673-2220-1/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE