Gel Phantoms for Body Microwave Propagation in the (2 to 26.5) GHz Frequency Band

Tissue phantoms are widely used for assessing the interaction between the electromagnetic waves and the human body. These are especially key in body area networks, where the body itself acts as the propagation medium since transmission is highly influenced by its diverse dielectric properties. Gels are suitable materials because of their high water content, which is required to mimic the dielectric properties of most tissues. In this paper, PHEA gels are suggested for achieving those properties due to their synthetic nature, which gives them the possibility to be swollen reversibly in more types of mixtures, in addition to water. These gels can be tailored to control the amount of liquid they embed so that they can imitate different body tissues in a wide bandwidth (2–26.5 GHz), which includes most of the current mobile communication and medical bands. This versatility offers the chance to create heterogeneous models of particular regions of the body, and thus improve the test realism. In addition, they own better mechanical and stability properties than the widely used agar or gelatin.