DESIGN OF A WIDEBAND WEARABLE USLOT ANTENNA WITH HEXAGONAL EBG GROUND FOR WLAN APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The main objective of this project is to design and fabricate a wearable wideband antenna. So the antenna with a U-slot patch and hexagonal EBG structure in a honeycomb pattern is designed on Keysight ADS software. A wideband of 38% is obtained with the help of this design with a gain of 9.08. U-slot has the property to improve the bandwidth of the antenna by introducing a capacitive component in the input impedance which cancels the inductive component of the feed. EBG structures have the property to suppress the surface waves due to the high impedance introduced by the periodic structures. This leads to better gain, bandwidth and radiation efficiency. Additionally, it shields the body from the back radiations thus being beneficial for the wearable applications.

Material selection also plays a major role as the antenna has to be flexible and robust. The flexibility of the antenna is because of the materials chosen i.e. copper tape as the conductor with conductivity 5.96×107 S/m and felt as the substrate with permittivity 1.38 F/m. So felt is chosen as the substrate due its wide availability in various thicknesses and copper tape is selected as the conductor due to its availability and ease of fabrication. For fabrication, the patterns were cut out from the copper tape and pasted on the felt and SMA connector was connected.

Then the various parameters are measured and compared to the simulated results. Both the results are almost in agreement. Therefore, we have achieved the objective of design and fabrication of a wearable antenna with a U-slot patch and hexagonal EBG ground. Given its range of frequency, this antenna finds its applications in the WLAN.