Textile antenna incorporated with high impedance surface for on-body performance enhancement

This article presents design of a new dual band textile antenna for WiFi application. Normally available felt fabric is utilized for the design. Operating frequencies of the antenna are 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz. Designed antenna is tested in free space and in the proximity of human body model. Because of coupling with human body, the antenna performance degrades, therefore dual band high impedance surface (HIS) has been employed for minimizing these degradations. The HIS array is composed of only 9 (3×3) elements and reduces the radiations toward body and hence minimizes specific absorption rate (SAR) by 94-97 % at the operating frequencies. The integrated design is able to show improvements in return loss, gain and directivity while maintaining good impedance match with adequate bandwidth at the operating frequencies. CST Microwave Studio has been used for all the simulations and designs.