A broadband helical saline water liquid antenna for wearable systems

ABSTRACT A broadband helical liquid antenna made of saline water is proposed. A transparent hollow support is employed to fabricate the antenna. The rotation structure is fabricated with a thin flexible tube. The saline water with a concentration of 3.5% can be injected into or be extracted out from the tube to change the quantity of the solution. Thus, the tunability of the radiation pattern could be realised by applying the fluidity of the liquid. The radiation feature of the liquid antenna is compared with that of a metal one, and fairly good agreement has been achieved. Furthermore, three statements of the radiation performance corresponding to the ratio of the diameter to the wavelength of the helical saline water antenna have been proposed. It has been found that the resonance frequency increases when the length of the feeding probe or the radius of the vertical part of the liquid decreases. The fractional bandwidth can reach over 20% with a total height of 185 mm at 1.80 GHz. The measured results indicate reasonable approximation to the simulated. The characteristics of the liquid antenna make it a good candidate for various wireless applications, especially the wearable systems.