Design and characterization of multiwall carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane composite MIMO antenna for wearable and...

A flexible and compact broadband antenna and its multi-input multi-output (MIMO) configuration is reported in this article targeting wearable and vehicular applications. The proposed antenna is made up of multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) working as radiative structure and ground plane while Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is utilized as the substrate. The unit element is initially designed and optimized for the potential application, thereafter, the MIMO configuration is proposed to enhance the diversity and channel capacity of the system. The results are verified using hardware prototypes fabricated by mold casting technique. The measured results offer a strong agreement with simulated results that consequently verify the proposed design. Since the antenna is targeted for wearable as well as vehicular applications, it is also simulated along with human phantom model and car model where the performance parameters are studied. The antenna offers low SAR value of around 0.04 W/Kg and 0.05 W/Kg on the human phantom chest and back, respectively. For vehicular system application, the antenna also offers high gain (7.61 dBi) with stable radiation patterns. The whole study is carried out using the EM software tool of CST for antenna design and SIM4Life for human body and vehicular analysis, while the equivalent circuit model (ECM) is designed using ADS. Furthermore, a detailed comparison is also made with state-of-the-art designs from existing literature which validates the potential of the proposed work for vehicular and wearable applications as it overperforms the related studies by offering overall strong performance.