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Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Design and performance of two-sleeve low profile antenna for

bio-medical applications
Shikha Sukhija ∗ , R.K. Sarin
Department of Electronics & Communication, National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab 144011, India
Received 8 June 2016; received in revised form 19 October 2016; accepted 27 October 2016
Available online 5 December 2016

Abstract
In this paper, a microstrip patch antenna is proposed which is suitable for bio-medical applications. The antenna is designed to
operate in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical band at 2.45 GHz. Analysis of two sleeve microstrip patch antenna is presented
using parametric variation. It is found that resonant frequency highly depends on sleeves dimensions. The performance of the
antenna is analysed by comparing the measured and simulated results and found to be in good agreement with each other. The
antenna characteristic impedance is 50  and is fabricated on FR4 substrate. The simulation results are obtained on finite-difference
time-domain based Empire XCcel simulator.
© 2016 Electronics Research Institute (ERI). Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: Microstrip patch antenna; VSWR; Bandwidth; Bio-medical applications; Return loss; ISM band

1. Introduction

Recently, the antenna technology is growing at much faster rate in every field of communication. Besides its applica-
tions in commercial and military areas, an antenna has now become a vital player in the medical sector too. The antenna
is being used for many kinds of medical applications such as hyperthermia and cancer treatment, tumour detection,
head and neck cancer treatment, remote health monitoring, speech sensing, self-monitoring, digestive monitoring etc.
(Lo and Lee, 1988). Microstrip antennas have recently received much attention in remote health monitoring systems
(Hall and Hao, 2006; Wong and Lin, 2005; Ogawa et al., 2000; Scanlon and Evans, 1997). It is now replacing the long
stay in the hospitals with the use of remote health monitoring system by which the patient has no need to consult the
doctor face to face. This remote health monitoring system has the ability to monitor the medical data of a patient in the
home, facilitating the diagnosis, treatment, prediction of disease and control of the condition also.

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: shikhasukhija@yahoo.co.in (S. Sukhija), sarinrk@nitj.ac.in (R.K. Sarin).
Peer review under the responsibility of Electronics Research Institute (ERI).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesit.2016.10.013
2314-7172/© 2016 Electronics Research Institute (ERI). Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
50 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Fig. 1. Proposed antenna design.

Table 1
Parameters and their values.
Parameters Values in mm

W 29
W1 20
W2 3
W3 3
W4 2
W5 10
L 41.50
L1 36.98
L2 15.30
L3 2.37
L4 24.05
L5 9.05
L6 21
L7 9.30

Several designs for antennas used in health monitoring have been published in the past research work (Karacolak
et al., 2008; Beach et al., 1999; Warty et al., 2008; Hao et al., 2005; Haga et al., 2009; Xia et al., 2009; Tak et al.,
2013; Malika et al., 2014; Conway and Scanlon, 2009; Asimakis et al., 2009; Rahman et al., 2013; Nornikman
et al., 2013). Many wireless systems are used for monitoring various physiological parameters like blood pressure
monitoring, glucose monitoring, temperature etc. (Karacolak et al., 2008; Beach et al., 1999; Warty et al., 2008).
Measurements have also been carried out at 2.45 GHz for the body worn antennas (Hao et al., 2005). Cavity slot
radiators are presented in Haga et al. (2009) and Xia et al. (2009) operate in ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical)
band with the frequency range of 2.4–2.5 GHz for on body and in body applications. Microstrip patch antenna has
been found to have other applications of self-monitoring and digestive monitoring too in biomedical sector (Tak et al.,
 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61 51

Fig. 2. Fabricated antenna.

Fig. 3. Simulated vs measured results.

2013; Malika et al., 2014). A miniaturized antenna presented in Malika et al. (2014) gives very less bandwidth, low
return loss and high VSWR value. The other reported structures include basic configuration of the microstrip patch
antenna for over body surface communication (Conway and Scanlon, 2009), an L-notch patch antenna for human
brain monitoring at 2.45 GHz (Asimakis et al., 2009), pi-shaped design of microstrip antenna for WiMax, Wi-fi and
biomedical applications (Rahman et al., 2013). But they are constrained because of their large size to fit in the human
body. An H-shaped slot antenna reported in the literature (Nornikman et al., 2013) is having return loss up to −20 dB
and bandwidth up to 110 MHz. For the use of antenna in medical applications, frequency bands and power levels are
standardized by MICS (Medical Implant Communication Service) band. MICS operates in 402–405 MHz band (MICS,
1999). Usual frequencies allowed for ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) application are 27 MHz, 433 MHz and
2.45 GHz (Smith, 1999). Safety issues should be considered when an antenna is implanted inside the human body
referring to IEEE C95.1 standardized definitions.
Low profile antennas offer favourable advantages such as compact size, low cost and ease to manufacture. So
these antennas are the strong candidates to be used for biomedical applications. To design an antenna for bio-medical
applications, one of the main considerations is that the size of the antenna should be small so that it will be easy to
mount on the human body with good functionality. In this paper, a novel design of microstrip patch antenna resonating
at 2.4 GHz frequency is proposed by lengthening the current path using two sleeves radiating patch. The proposed
antenna is aimed to be used for remote health monitoring applications in bio-medical sector.
52 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Table 2
Human tissues and their thickness for the proposed antenna (Duan et al., 2012).
Human tissue Thickness in mm

Skin 4
Fat 4
Antenna substrate 1.6
Muscle 8

Table 3
Dielectric properties of human tissues (Gabriel et al., 1996).
Tissue Permittivity εr Conductivity σ (S/m)

Muscle 52.7 1.73

Skin 38 1.46
Fat 5.28 0.10
Bone 18.54 0.80

Table 4
Preparation of phantom liquids (Sani et al., 2010).
Ingredients Skin Fat Muscle

Deionized water 50% 2.9% 59.5%

NaCl – 0.1% 0.5%
Sugar 50% – 40%
Vegetable oil – 30% –
Flour – 67% –

2. Antenna design and its formulation

The proposed antenna shown in Fig. 1 consists of two sleeves having lengths different to each other. The antenna
is fabricated on the FR4 substrate with dielectric constant of 4.4 and loss tangent of 0.002. The substrate thickness is
1.6 mm, the overall dimension of the substrate is 41.50 × 29 × 1.6 mm3 . The length of the first arm is 36.98 mm and
width is 3 mm. The length of the second arm is 15.30 mm and width is 3 mm. All the dimensions are mentioned in
Table 1. The ground size is 17.20 × 29 mm2 . The fabricated photograph of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 2.

3. Performance and characterization

All simulations in this work are obtained with the help of Empire XCcel version 5.5. The simulated and measured
results of the antenna are illustrated in Fig. 3.
The return loss is measured using Vector Network Analyzer. The measured value for return loss is −37 dB at
2.44 GHz. The simulated results agree with the measurement results. The return loss in dB with respect to frequency
in GHz for the proposed antenna depicts that it can be used for biomedical applications at 2.45 GHz. The proposed
antenna covers the ISM band frequency (from 2.131 GHz to 2.813 GHz) for biomedical applications with 682 MHz
bandwidth (S11 <−10 dB). Due to this useful advantage, the behaviour of the proposed two sleeve antenna is measured
by preparing phantom liquid. The human tissues (skin/fat/muscle) with their thickness (Duan et al., 2012), dielectric
properties (Gabriel et al., 1996) and development of the phantom liquid (Sani et al., 2010) for muscle, fat, skin are
tabulated in Tables 2–4, respectively. As a matter of fact, there is no significant change in the matching characteristics by
incorporating muscle model. It only changes the dielectric constant by 20% and resonant frequency by 4% (Lee et al.,
2009). The model for measurement setup and experimental setup for the proposed antenna is shown in Figs. 4 and 5
respectively. The minor variation in the simulated and measured results is due to the fictitious environment developed
for the human body.
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Fig. 4. Model for measurement setup.

Fig. 5. Measurement setup for the proposed antenna.

Fig. 6. Frequency vs return loss performance for different length of first sleeve.

There are several ways of optimization in different fields as reported in literature (Valipour, 2015a,b, 2014;
Khoshravesh et al., 2015; Stavros et al., 2015). However, in this case, the optimization of the proposed design is
carried out using a number of simulations and make use of those optimized parameters for favourable conditions. The
54 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Fig. 7. Frequency vs VSWR performance for different length of first sleeve.

Fig. 8. (a) Frequency vs impedance (real part) performance (b) frequency vs impedance (imag. part) performance for different values of L1 in mm.
 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61 55

Fig. 9. Frequency vs return loss performance for different length of second sleeve.

Fig. 10. Frequency vs VSWR performance for different length of second sleeve.

parametric variations are carried out with respect to the sleeves’ dimensions and ground plane are discussed in the
subsequent section.

4. Parametric variation

4.1. Varying length of first sleeve

By changing the dimension of first sleeve keeping length of the second arm fixed, it is observed that lengthening
the sleeve gives lesser antenna losses than shortening its length. Based on this comparison, the graph is obtained for
different length of the first sleeve, which is shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen that by varying the length L1 from 12.98 mm
to 36.98 mm in steps of 8 mm, the results show deviation in the frequency and scattering parameter also. As the length
increases, the return loss decreases from −36.66 dB to −5 dB. The VSWR vs frequency graph for different values of L1
are shown in Fig. 7. It can be concluded that for the value of L1 = 36.98 mm, the VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio)
gives the minimum value of 1.003. The impedance graph in Fig. 8 depicts that obtained characteristics impedance for
the first sleeve length of 36.98 mm is 47.684  (real part) and 0  (imaginary value). As the length L1 is optimized,
the real part of impedance moves nearer to 50  and imaginary part moves closer to 0 .
56 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Fig. 11. (a) Frequency vs impedance (real-part) performance (b) frequency vs impedance (imag.-part) performance for different values of L2 in
mm.

4.2. Varying length of second sleeve

Similarly, by changing the length of second sleeve keeping length of first arm fixed, gives the desired result at ISM
band frequency which is required for the proposed antenna to be worked for medical applications. The optimization in
respect of the length of second sleeve was supported by fine tuning of the parameters by FDTD based Empire XCcel
simulator. Through optimization, the total length of the second sleeve was resulted as 15.30 mm. Variation is shown
in respect of the length L2 from 15.30 mm to 36.30 mm in steps of 7 mm. As the second sleeve is shortened keeping
L1 = 36.98 mm, antenna converts its dual band characteristics to single band at 2.4 GHz. The proposed antenna gives
−36.66 dB return loss at L2 = 15.30 mm. Based on this comparison, graphs for return loss and VSWR with respect to
frequency are obtained for different L2 are illustrated in Figs. 9 and 10 respectively. On the other hand, the impedance
graph for real and imaginary parts are shown in Fig. 11 which demonstrates that optimized value of L2 gives the value
of real part closer to 50  and imaginary part gives value closer to 0 .
 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61 57

Fig. 12. Frequency vs return loss performance for different length of ground plane.

Fig. 13. Frequency vs VSWR performance for different length of ground plane.

4.3. Varying length of ground plane

The variation in the length of ground plane, at the opposite side of the radiating patch is an important factor in
designing a microstrip patch antenna. The optimization in respect of the ground plane length was supported by fine
tuning while keeping all other parameters constant. The total length of the ground was resulted as 17.20 mm to maintain
its suitability for biomedical applications. Different values of the length of ground plane are taken such as 7.20 mm,
12.20 mm, 17.20 mm, 22.20 mm, 27.20 mm, 32.20 mm and 37.20 mm and it is perceived that varying this length affect
the antenna performance seriously. The Fig. 12 shows that by changing the ground plane dimensions, there is change
in the values of resonant frequency, return loss and bandwidth. It is also observed that the ground plane length at
17.20 mm gives the optimum value of return loss is −37 dB and bandwidth approximately upto 700 MHz for desired
ISM band application. VSWR, in Fig. 13, shifts nearer to 1 for the optimized dimension of ground plane and gives the
value of 1.003 for ground length = 17.20 mm. Over most of the frequencies above or below 2.4 GHz for this variation,
the real value of impedance shown in Fig. 14 is less than or greater than 50 . As the length is optimised to 17.20 mm,
the real value of impedance moves closer to 50  and imaginary value shifts towards 0 .
58 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Fig. 14. Frequency vs impedance (real part) performance and (b) frequency vs impedance (imag. part) performance for different length of ground
plane.

The radiation patterns are shown in Fig. 15 which shows the XZ pattern for ∅ = 0◦ , XY pattern if θ = 90◦ and YZ
pattern for ∅ = 90◦ . In this figure, E absolute gives the magnitude in dB for both polarizations, Ephi and Etheta are the
azimuthal and elevation component of radiation pattern respectively.
Fig. 16 demonstrates the simulated current distributions of the antenna at 2.4 GHz. At this frequency, it can be
perceived that the majority of the electric currents is concentrated on two sleeves while the currents at the middle
portion of the radiator is weak. This implies that these two sleeves have a substantial effect on the antenna performance
for operating at 2.4 GHz frequency.

5. Conclusion

A novel design of microstrip patch antenna suitable for bio-medical applications is presented. The simulated and
measured results give good performance of the antenna to be used for biomedical applications which is designed to
operate in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical band at 2.45 GHz. For the measurement purpose, the human tissue
like material was developed to provide real environment for the antenna applicable for biomedical application. Results
show the fractional bandwidth (Balanis, 2005) for the proposed antenna 27.58% from 2.131 GHz to 2.813 GHz (S11
<−10 dB). The value obtained for VSWR and impedance is 1.03 and 48.37 , respectively. Its compactness, good
S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61 59

Fig. 15. (a) XZ pattern at phi = 0◦ (b) XY pattern at theta = 90◦ (c) YZ pattern at phi = 90◦ .
60 S. Sukhija, R.K. Sarin / Journal of Electrical Systems and Information Technology 4 (2017) 49–61

Fig. 16. Simulated current distributions.

frequency versus losses response, radiation pattern will definitely help this designed antenna to be applicable for bio-
medical applications. The sources of error could be attributed to the evolution of the substrate characteristics and its
fabrication process. Measurement of SAR value could be investigated to meet the international standards for human
exposure to EM wave radiation.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Dr. Sarabjeet Singh, Department of Physics at National Institute of Technology,
Jalandhar for providing timely help and support.

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