Advanced Design Techniques and Materials for Miniaturization, Efficiency Enhancement, and Multi-Functional Operation in Wearable Antennas
| dc.contributor.advisor | Fumeaux, Christophe | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Chen, Shengjian Jammy | |
| dc.contributor.author | Samal, Purna B. | |
| dc.contributor.school | School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2023 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Wireless body area networks (WBANs) have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their potential for remote health monitoring, smart diagnosis, and location tracking. In such applications, the antenna sub-system, which is responsible for wireless communications is an essential component that defines the efficiency and reliability of the data exchange. It is crucial for the WBAN antenna to be lightweight, compact, low-profile, and flexible to offer comfort to the users when worn. Moreover, WBAN antennas are required to be efficient and capable of providing multi-functional operation to better serve for advanced applications. Therefore, to realize the immense potential of WBAN applications, it is of paramount importance to address the current challenges of wearable antenna design. Flexible planar antennas with compact size are highly desirable for WBAN applications due to their unobtrusive wearability and convenient integrability. To realize such antennas, Chapter 3 of this thesis presents suitable miniaturization techniques for wearable antennas. Firstly, the chapter introduces a simple antenna miniaturization technique using manipulation of the resonant current path length. Secondly, a novel 3D-corrugated ground structure for miniaturizing wearable antennas is presented. It is realized by single folding of the full ground plane located underneath the radiating edges of the microstrip antenna. This structure provides additional capacitive and inductive loading, which slows the wave propagation and makes the antenna appear electrically longer. Importantly, such a structure can be applied to miniaturize existing planar antennas with the ground plane while preserving their radiation performance. Recently, non-conventional materials have become increasingly favourable in wearable antenna design with the aim of achieving attractive features such as environmental friendliness, mechanical flexibility, and low cost. However, they usually have high conductor loss or dielectric loss, which result in low radiation efficiency. To address this issue, Chapter 4 presents antenna design techniques to improve the radiation efficiency of planar antennas implemented with lossy materials. The improvement technique is based on two aspects: reducing the conductor loss by altering the radiator shape to lower the maximum surface current density; and, introducing an elevated ground plane to reduce the dielectric loss by decreasing the electromagnetic energy concentration trapped within the dielectric material. The technique can also be applied to improve the efficiency of existing planar antennas while preserving their overall size and radiation performance. A single antenna possessing multi-functional capabilities is highly desirable for operation at various frequencies with independent radiation characteristics. It offers greater flexibility in adapting to changing wireless communications requirements and reduces the size, weight, and cost of the wearable system. To achieve such functionalities, Chapter 5 of the thesis presents a dual-band dual-mode antenna based on a highly flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. The design technique features a systematic design methodology that enables the independent control of the resonances and offers high flexibility to adapt the design for specific frequencies of operation. The design technique further extends by introducing a new hybrid-substrate method to improve the radiation efficiency. Chapter 6 presents antenna design techniques for achieving multi-band operation that covers the 2.45 and 5 GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) bands and IEEE UWB high band. It presents a textile-based flexible multi-band antenna with a full ground plane and introduces a design method that incorporates optimization technique using characteristics mode analysis (CMA) to extend the antenna working bandwidth. In brief, this thesis introduces advanced antenna design techniques aimed at miniaturizing wearable antennas, improving their efficiency, and enabling multi-functional operation for WBAN applications. | en |
| dc.description.dissertation | Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, 2023 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/2440/139083 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.provenance | This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals | en |
| dc.subject | Wearable antennas, flexible antennas, textile antenna, low-profile, planar antennas, wireless body area network (WBAN), body-centric communications, ultrawideband (UWB), wireless local area network (WLAN), directional radiation pattern, microstrip antenna, radiation efficiency, antenna miniaturization, corrugated structure, non-metallic antennas, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), dual-band antenna, dual-mode antenna, multi-band antenna, time-domain performance, system fidelity factor. | en |
| dc.title | Advanced Design Techniques and Materials for Miniaturization, Efficiency Enhancement, and Multi-Functional Operation in Wearable Antennas | en |
| dc.type | Thesis | en |
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