Pattern diversity antenna with high-temperature tolerance for body area networks

A high-temperature tolerant pattern diversity antenna is presented for body wearable applications in hostile conditions. The proposed system consists of a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) placed at the centre of a slot loop antenna. The combination yields pattern diversity with broadside and endfire radiation patterns from slot loop and DRAs, respectively. The antenna system offers common bandwidth of 4.95% with port isolation of better than 13 dB at 2.4 GHz. The thermal characteristics of antenna have been studied for high-temperature operation and no discernible change in the radiation behaviour is noted. The antenna undergoes 2% resonant frequency shift when operated at elevated temperature. The antenna diversity has been measured for three on-body communication channels. The antenna offers 9.5 dB diversity gain in a pure non-line-of-sight channel surrounded by a rich fading environment subjected to the selection combining scheme. The antenna has dimensions of 0.4λo × 0.4λo × 0.1λo .