Increase of Input Resistance of a Normal-Mode Helical Antenna (NMHA) in Human Body Application

In recent years, the development of healthcare monitoring devices requires high performance and compact in-body sensor antennas. A normal-mode helical antenna (NMHA) is one of the most suitable candidates that meets the criteria, especially with the ability to achieve high efficiency when the antenna structure is in self-resonant mode. It was reported that when the antenna was placed in a human body, the antenna efficiency was decreased due to the increase of its input resistance (R). However, the reason for R increase was not clarified. In this paper, the increase of R is ensured through experiments and the physical reasons are validated through electromagnetic simulations. In the simulation, the R is calculated by placing the NMHA inside a human's stomach, skin and fat. The dependency of R to conductivity (σ) is significant. Through current distribution calculation, it is verified that the reason of the increase in R is due to the decrease of antenna current. The effects of R to bandwidth (BW) and electrical field are also numerically clarified. Furthermore, by using the fabricated human body phantom, the measured R and bandwidth are also obtained. From the good agreement between the measured and simulated results, the condition of R increment is clarified.