Reconfigurable wearable antenna for compensation of detuning effects

Abstract

The presence of objects in proximity of a wearable antenna can detune its operation band. Such detuning effects through a metal object or a human tissue loading for a wearable antenna are firstly experimentally investigated in this paper. The antenna under test is a previously reported reconfigurable wearable antenna based on snap-on buttons with integrated tuning electronics. The empirical results suggest that the undesired frequency shifts will oscillate with varying distance from antenna to the loading object, but that the fractional detuning will generally remain below 8%. This provides general guidance for required compensation of the detuning effects through frequency tunability of the antenna. In addition, compensation for the observed detuning is further demonstrated using the antenna’s reconfigurability. The presented findings demonstrate that reconfigurable antennas can be beneficial to wearable wireless communication systems where complex dynamic surrounding conditions are expected.