Low-Profile Wearable Wideband Antenna with High Gain Based on Franklin Array for Future 5G Wireless Body Area Networks

A conformal wideband array antenna with low-profile, high gain, and full-backed ground plane is designed based on Franklin array antenna (FAA) for wearable applications. The antenna is designed to operate at the licensed 28-GHz band for 5G wireless networks recommended by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The bandwidth of the designed antenna also covers the 33-GHz band for satellite communication and navigation applications. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed antenna has the widest matching bandwidth amongst reported modified FAAs. Numerical studies are performed on the performance of the designed antenna under structural deformation such as bending and human body integration to corroborate its potential for wearable applications. It was observed that the wideband performance of the antenna is well preserved during structural deformation as well as human body integration with no significant variations. The proposed antenna features a compact size with dimensions of $80\times 22\times 0.25$ mm3 and exhibits a matched bandwidth of 24.43% (27.3 GHz to 34.9 GHz), with a gain value of 14.02 dBi at 28 GHz and 15.2 dBi at 31.4 GHz.