Abstract
The design, simulation and fabrication of a P-shaped monopole antenna for wireless body area networks (WBAN) applications is presented in this paper. It is noted that the radiation characteristics was improved by attaching a P-shaped element to the ground plane. The simulation of the proposed antenna in the free space and close proximity of body surface has been done using CST Microwave Studio. The proposed antenna is designed on the FR4 substrate with dielectric constant of 4.4 and 1.6mm thickness; and the operating frequency band is between 3.1 to 5.1GHz. The final optimized design has dimensions of 32mm ×28mm. The proposed antenna improves the gain of close proximity of body surface. In addition, the antenna improves the reflection coefficient when placed close human body compared to other antennas. It was observed that there is good agreement between the simulation and measurement results, thereby showing that the antenna is potential to be deployed for WBAN application. © 2014 SERSC.