Compact Wideband Microstrip Patch Antenna Design for Breast Cancer Detection

The current breast cancer detection techniques are mostly invasive and suffer from high cost, high false rate and inefficacy in early detection. These limitations can be subdued by development of non-invasive microwave detection system whose performance is predominantly dependent on the antenna used in the system. The designing of a compact wideband antenna and matching its impedance with breast phantom is a challenging task. In this paper, we have designed a compact antenna matched with the breast phantom operating in wideband frequency from 1 to 6 GHz capable to detect the dielectric (or impedance) contrast of the benign and malignant tissue. The impedance of the antenna is matched to a cubically shaped breast phantom and a very small tumor (volume=1 cm3). The antenna is tuned to the possible range of electrical properties of breast phantom and tumour (permittivity ranging from 10 to 20 and conductivity from 1.5 to 2.5 S/m). The return loss (S11), E-field distribution and specific absorption rate (SAR) are simulated. The operating band of antenna placed near the phantom without tumor was found to be (1.11-5.47)GHz and with tumor inside phantom is (1.29-5.50)GHz. Results also show that the SAR of the antenna is within the safety limit.