Multi-Polarization Reconfigurable Antenna for Wireless Biomedical System

This paper presents a multi-polarization reconfigurable antenna with four dipole radiators for biomedical applications in body-centric wireless communication system (BWCS). The proposed multi-dipole antenna with switchable 0°, +45°, 90° and -45° linear polarizations is able to overcome the polarization mismatching and multi-path distortion in complex wireless channels as in BWCS. To realize this reconfigurable feature for the first time among all the reported antenna designs, we assembled four dipoles together with 45° rotated sequential arrangements. These dipoles are excited by the same feeding source provided by a ground tapered Balun. A metallic reflector is placed below the dipoles to generate a broadside radiation. By introducing eight PIN diodes as RF switches between the excitation source and the four dipoles, we can control a specific dipole to operate. As the results, 0°, +45°, 90° and -45° linear polarizations can be switched correspondingly to different operating dipoles. Experimental results agree with the simulation and show that the proposed antenna well works in all polarization modes with desirable electrical characteristics. The antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth of 34% from 2.2 to 3.1 GHz (for the reflection coefficient ≤ -10 dB) and exhibits a stable cardioid-shaped radiation pattern across the operating bandwidth with a peak gain of 5.2 dBi. To validate the effectiveness of the multi-dipole antenna for biomedical applications, we also designed a meandered PIFA as the implantable antenna. Finally, the communication link measurement shows that our proposed antenna is able to minimize the polarization mismatching and maintains the optimal communication link thanks to its polarization reconfigurability.