Design of a transparent and flexible antenna for on-body communications

Abstract

Recently, the transparent and flexible antenna has emerged with great potential for on-body communications mainly due to its limited visual impacts and adaptability. In this final year project, the broadside mode antenna design was implemented by either transparent liquid or transparent conductive film with proposed center frequency at 2.4~2.5 GHz. The operation mechanisms of the two proposed antennas are different: for the liquid design, Water is employed due to its transparency, liquidity and high permittivity. The prototype of this design comes from the dense dielectric patch antenna (DDPA). And a high efficiency at microwave frequency is expected due to the reduction of metallic loss; another design resembles the traditional metallic microstrip antenna except that the patch and ground are replaced by transparent conductive films. After simulation and fabrication processes, these two antennas were tested and the results were acceptable but not optimum. Details would be illustrated and elaborated in the section of Results and Discussion. Lastly, the report would be concluded with possible future scopes.