On-body, inward-facing antennas
10581173 ยท 2020-03-03
Assignee
Inventors
Cpc classification
H01Q1/22
ELECTRICITY
H01Q15/006
ELECTRICITY
H01Q1/273
ELECTRICITY
H01Q1/52
ELECTRICITY
International classification
H01Q15/00
ELECTRICITY
H01Q1/22
ELECTRICITY
Abstract
In some embodiments, an antenna includes a dielectric substrate having a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface, a planar central antenna element provided on the first surface, and a planar electromagnetic bandgap structure provided on the first surface and surrounding the central antenna element.
Claims
1. An antenna comprising: a dielectric substrate having a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface; a planar central antenna element provided on the first surface; and a planar electromagnetic bandgap structure provided on the first surface and surrounding the central antenna element, wherein the planar electromagnetic bandgap structure comprises multiple continuous, concentric conductors.
2. The antenna of claim 1, wherein the dielectric substrate has a thickness of less than one quarter the operating wavelength of the antenna.
3. The antenna of claim 1, wherein the planar central antenna element is a spiral antenna element.
4. The antenna of claim 1, wherein the planar central antenna element is an Archimedes spiral antenna element.
5. The antenna of claim 1, wherein the concentric conductors are conductor traces that have been deposited on the first surface.
6. The antenna of claim 1, wherein the concentric conductors are circular.
7. The antenna of claim 1, further comprising a ground plane provided on the second surface of the dielectric substrate.
8. The antenna of claim 7, wherein the concentric conductors include grounded conductors that are electrically connected to the ground plane with vias that extend through the dielectric substrate.
9. The antenna of claim 8, wherein the concentric conductors further include floating conductors that are not electrically connected to the ground plane.
10. The antenna of claim 9, wherein the grounded conductors and floating conductors are arranged in a spaced, alternating manner such that every other concentric conductor from an inner edge of the electromagnetic bandgap structure to an outer edge of the electromagnetic bandgap structure is either a grounded conductor or a floating conductor.
11. An on-body, inward-facing antenna comprising: a dielectric substrate having a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface; a planar central antenna element provided on the first surface; a ground plane provided on the second surface; and a planar electromagnetic bandgap structure provided on the first surface and surrounding the central antenna element, the electromagnetic bandgap structure comprising multiple continuous, concentric conductors that include grounded conductors that are electrically connected to the ground plane with vias that extend through the dielectric substrate and floating conductors that are not electrically connected to the ground plane, wherein the grounded conductors and floating conductors are arranged in a spaced, alternating manner such that every other concentric conductor from an inner edge of the electromagnetic bandgap structure to an outer edge of the electromagnetic bandgap structure is either a grounded conductor or a floating conductor.
12. A method for limiting the generation of unwanted side lobes from a radiating planar antenna element provided on a surface of a substrate, the method comprising: forming a planar electromagnetic bandgap structure on the substrate surface in a manner in which it surrounds the central antenna element, wherein the electromagnetic bandgap structure comprises multiple continuous, concentric conductors.
13. The method of claim 12, wherein forming a planar electromagnetic bandgap structure comprises depositing metal traces to create the multiple continuous, concentric conductors.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein forming a planar electromagnetic bandgap structure further comprises forming vias through a subset of the concentric conductors that extend down to a ground plane provided on an opposite surface of the substrate such that the subset of concentric conductors are grounded conductors and the concentric conductors that are not connected to the ground plane are floating conductors.
Description
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
(1) The present disclosure may be better understood with reference to the following figures. Matching reference numerals designate corresponding parts throughout the figures, which are not necessarily drawn to scale.
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION
(24) As noted above, unwanted and augmented side lobes occur when surface waves reach the edge of a finite ground plane of an on-body, inward-facing antenna and such side lobes negatively affect both the efficiency and radiation pattern of the antenna. It can, therefore, be appreciated that it would be desirable to have antennas for on-body microwave radiometric sensing that are less susceptible to surface wave propagation. Disclosed herein are examples of such antennas. In some embodiments, the antennas comprise an electromagnetic bandgap structure comprising multiple continuous, concentric conductors that surround a planar central antenna element and attenuate surface wave propagation. Such antennas can be made to have thicknesses less than one quarter wave of the radiation wavelength and, therefore, are particularly suitable for application to the skin of a human being or animal. In some embodiments, the antennas are incorporated into microwave radiometric sensors that can be used to measure core body temperature.
(25) In the following disclosure, various specific embodiments are described. It is to be understood that those embodiments are example implementations of the disclosed inventions and that alternative embodiments are possible. All such embodiments are intended to fall within the scope of this disclosure.
(26) This disclosure describes a design process for inward-facing antennas for on-body sensing. In one embodiment, an antenna comprises a quasi-corrugated, symmetric, electromagnetic bandgap structure that is used to mitigate unwanted side lobes that arise from on-body, inward-facing antennas. The effectiveness of the approach is highlighted by comparing the simulated and measured radiation characteristics of an on-body spiral antenna both with and without the electromagnetic bandgap structure. Experimental measurements show an improvement in the broadside gain, side gain, and rear gain of 3.84 dB, 2.64 dB, and 8 dB, respectively from the EBG antenna over the convention antenna. Likewise, simulations show an improvement in the broadside gain, side gain, and rear gain of 0 dB, 7 dB, and 7 dB, respectively. Main beam efficiency is improved from 45.33% and 54.43% for the conventional antenna to 87.59% and 86.36% for the EBG antenna for simulated and measured beam efficiencies, respectively.
(27) Designing antennas for human body contact sensing imposes a number of restrictions that are specific to this unique case. Antenna input match along with radiation and beam efficiencies must be precisely known and maximized in this scenario. There exist few works in the literature that explicitly outline how to design antennas for on-body, inward-facing applications. Generally speaking, these works fail to discuss how to mitigate unwanted side lobes that are present within this application. A planar, one-arm Archimedean spiral antenna has been chosen as a candidate antenna element due to its wideband impedance characteristics, high efficiency, and the relative ease in realizing a feeding network. A design process is presented to attain satisfactory impedance match for an antenna in contact with a human tissue-mimicking phantom.
(28) Archimedean spiral antennas are considered frequency independent because of the broadband pattern and impedance characteristics they exhibit. A one-arm Archimedean spiral antenna can be modeled using the curves specified in
R.sub.M=r.sub.in,M+C.sub.exp.sub.angle(1)
where M=curve a or b, R.sub.M represents the radial distance along the surface, C.sub.exp is the expansion coefficient of spiral (equals 1 for Archimedean spiral), .sub.angle is the rotation angle which is equal to 2.Math.(# of spiral turns), r.sub.in is the inner radius of spiral at a rotation angle of zero, r.sub.out is the outer radius of spiral at the maximum rotation angle, and w is the spiral width which equals to r.sub.in,b(.sub.angle)r.sub.in,a(.sub.angle). The active region of a spiral (where coherent radiation occurs because currents along the spiral arms have identical phase) is realized when the circumference of the spiral equals one wavelength. The theoretical minimum, f.sub.min, and maximum, f.sub.max, frequency limit of operation are given in Equations (2) and (3), respectively
(29)
where c is the speed of light, .sub.r,eff is the effective relative permittivity of the propagation medium, r.sub.in=r.sub.in,a(.sub.0), and r.sub.out=C.sub.exp.Math..sub.max+r.sub.in,b(.sub.0).
(30) The design process for an on-body, inward-facing, one-arm Archimedean spiral antenna will now be described. The initial antenna dimensions can be obtained from Equations (2) and (3). A composite dielectric quantity is defined for the stratified body tissue layers. The composite or effective permittivity is the weighted sum of all dielectric constants for each tissue layer up to the plane-wave power penetration depth. The Lorentz-Lorenz effective medium approximation (EMA) is used to average the components into a composite material. The Lorentz-Lorenz EMA is shown by
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where .sub.i and v.sub.i are the complex dielectric constants and volume fractions, respectively, of layer i to a maximum layer number of N. The antenna is designed in a lossless effective propagation medium with no ground plane using the above spiral parameters. A substrate and ground plane are added to the design at a distance near to .sub.eff/4 from the antenna element. Manufacturing process restrictions determine the closet obtainable substrate height to the .sub.eff/4 distance. Dielectric losses are added to the full-space composite medium and the antenna parameters are re-tuned. The full-space medium is replaced by finite thickness stratified lossy tissue layers and the antenna is re-tuned. After a satisfactory impedance match is obtained, the radiation pattern is corrected.
(32) The structure and dimensions of one proposed antenna are illustrated in
(33) The Ansys HFSS program was used to simulate the conventional antenna reflection coefficient across a frequency range of 0.1 to 3 GHz for four different propagation environments. The four propagation environments are illustrated in
(34) A network analyzer was used to measure the reflection coefficient for the fabricated conventional antenna in contact with the stratified human tissue phantom. The reflection coefficient for both the measured and simulated on-body sensing scenario was better than 10 dB over the frequency range of 0.4 to 3+ GHz. Likewise, the reflection coefficient was better than 20 dB over the frequency ranges of 0.9 to 1.55 GHz and 1.8 to 2.4 GHz for the measured on-body sensing scenario and better than 20 dB over the frequency range of 0.72 to 2.52 GHz for the same simulated scenario. The measured and simulated reflection coefficients for the antenna in the air matched reasonably well. However, the measured reflection coefficient for the on-body antenna exhibited more resonances than the simulated response. These differences are believed to be due to the uncertainty in the measurement of the actual permittivity value of the phantoms used during measurements. A notable difference between the simulation and actual setup lies in the assumption that there is a static dielectric constant per frequency for each individual phantom when in reality the actual phantom exhibits changes in the dielectric constant with spatial area and depth.
(35) Ansys HFSS was also used to simulate the antenna radiation patterns at 1.4 GHz. The fabricated antenna radiation patterns were measured in an anechoic chamber. The normalized realized gains for the four simulated cases are given in
(36) The simulated and measured main beam efficiency at 1.4 GHz for the propagation environment (d), where the spiral antenna is in contact with a finite volume multi-layered upper space dielectric body, were 45.33% and 54.43%, respectively.
(37) The design of an in-plane continuous electromagnetic bandgap cylindrical structure is presented and integrated with the previous conventional spiral antenna design. Simulated and measured results are presented for a spiral antenna integrated with the electromagnetic bandgap structure. Radiation characteristics are compared for the scenarios with and without the electromagnetic bandgap structure.
(38) Special attention must be paid to the design of inward facing on-body antennas in order to mitigate unwanted side lobes that arise in the antenna pattern. For microstrip antennas, these augmented side lobes can occur due to the unwanted propagation of surface waves. Dielectric slabs and metal surfaces over a ground plane (non-grounded structures) support surface waves. Surface waves radiate when discontinuities exist within an antenna structure. The surface waves that become trapped in the substrate, travel toward and lead to diffraction at the edges of a finite ground plane. This ground plane edge diffraction leads to unwanted radiation into the propagation medium. Surface wave propagation can negatively affect the efficiency and radiation pattern of a microstrip antenna and can also cause undesirable mutual coupling between neighboring devices.
(39) Electromagnetic bandgap structures can be used to alter the geometry of a structure so that surface waves can be attenuated as they travel across the structure. A corrugated structure is a metal slab where vertical slots have been cut out. The slots are treated as a parallel-plate transmission line where the slot depth is typically one-quarter wavelength long. The ground plane (or short circuit) at the bottom of the slot is transformed into an open circuit at the top of the slot and this transformation results in a high impedance value. Describing this process in another way, the corrugated structure makes the ground plane appear electrically larger due to the current travelling a longer distance in contrast to a planar ground plane. Also, the slot depths can be reduced by introducing a loading material. Dielectric loading for the corrugated structure has drawbacks due to special machining, which is not practical, along with an increased cost and weight that is required to realize the one-quarter wavelength corrugated structure slot depth for lower frequencies.
(40) The planar electromagnetic bandgap structure disclosed herein is an evolution from the corrugated structure. The basic premise of the proposed electromagnetic bandgap is that both dielectric loading and the inductance to ground can be increased to lower the electromagnetic bandgap structure resonance frequency. There must be many corrugations per wavelength, but the number of corrugations is managed with consideration to both the amount of available surface area on the substrate and the manufacturing process limitations (e.g., smallest feature size capability).
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(42) With further reference to
(43) An example antenna having a configuration similar to that shown in
(44) The electromagnetic bandgap structure was cylindrically periodic so that a radial unit cell is formed from a slice of the electromagnetic bandgap array sectored halfway between two vias and the center of board, as shown in
(45) The equivalent circuit for the electromagnetic bandgap unit cell is shown in
(46) Applying dispersion analysis concepts, the ABCD matrix parameters for a cascade of all unit cell elements are given by
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where T.sub.TL1, T.sub.C1, T.sub.C2, T.sub.TL2, and T.sub.2L are the individual transmission matrices of the first t-line section, capacitor C.sub.1, capacitor C.sub.2, the second t-line section, and inductor L, respectively, and is the propagation constant of the unloaded line.
(48) The equivalent circuit dispersion relation, which defines the passband of the structure, is given by
cos()=(A+D)/2,(6)
where is the phase shift across the full unit cell.
(49) While the electromagnetic bandgap unit-cell equivalent circuit is provided above, the lumped element circuit values from the sub-cell elements must be extracted. Ansys HFSS was used to model the scattering parameters of the individual sub-cell elements. The corresponding wave-port setups for the HFSS sub-cell equivalent circuit value extraction are shown for the capacitive pi-network, the shunt inductor network, and the transmission-line network in
(50) The equivalent circuit lumped element values are extracted for the capacitive pi-network, the shunt inductance, and the transmission line sections using ABCD parameters. The series capacitance C.sub.gap in the capacitive pi-network is found by
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where Z.sub.c is the impedance of the capacitive pi-network and Y.sub.12 are the corresponding y parameters of the capacitive network. The shunt capacitance C.sub.shunt in the capacitive pi-network is found by
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where Y.sub.c is the admittance of the capacitive pi-network and Y.sub.11 are the corresponding y parameters of the capacitive network. The shunt inductance L.sub.shunt is found by
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where Y.sub.L is the admittance of the inductive network and Y.sub.11, Y.sub.21, Y.sub.21, Y.sub.22 are the corresponding y parameters of the inductive network.
(54) Ansys HFSS eigenmode solver was used to simulate the dispersion diagram for the unit cell of the electromagnetic bandgap surface contour along the x direction. The x-directed bandgap, shown in
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(56) The normalized realized gains for the four simulated cases are given in
(57) The simulated and measured main beam efficiency at 1.4 GHz for the propagation environment (c), where the electromagnetic bandgap spiral antenna is in contact with a finite volume multi-layered upper space dielectric body, are 87.59% and 86.36%, respectively.