Solar Cell Integrated Wearable Patch Antenna on Artificial Magnetic Conductor for On-Body and In-Body Communications

This paper presents a patch antenna on a jeans textile with an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) structure stacked on a solar cell for wearable applications in the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band. Meanwhile, the loading of the AMC reflector increases the radiation efficiency and antenna gain and also results in a reduction in specific absorption rate levels. As examination cases, two textile antenna designs loaded on 7 x 8 patches of AMC plane with the ground plane of both fully copper conductor and partially copper aided with solar cells were fabricated and tested, presenting a strong agreement between simulation and measurement. Its measured impedance bandwidth is 13.79% (2.16 GHz-2.48 GHz) with good return loss and voltage standing wave ratio features in the operating band where it is being used. Besides being a source of electricity, the silicon solar cells are also used as a radio frequency ground plane for the AMC plane. They can produce 363.08 mW.