A high-gain, low-SAR UWB all-textile two-port MIMO antenna based on an AMC structure for wireless body area networks

Flexible antennas have emerged as essential components for next-generation wireless body-centric networks (WBSNs), healthcare monitoring platforms, and 5G-enabled IoT architectures. Nevertheless, their close placement on the human body substantially increases electromagnetic energy absorption, resulting in elevated specific absorption rate (SAR) levels and degraded radiation performance. This paper introduces an all-textile, dual-port, ultra-wideband (UWB) MIMO antenna integrated with an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) to concurrently enhance radiation gain and mitigate SAR for wearable applications. The proposed antenna is realized on a felt textile substrate and employs conductive textile elements to ensure mechanical flexibility and seamless garment integration. Experimental characterization demonstrates that the AMC-backed configuration achieves an impedance bandwidth ranging from 3.7 to 14 GHz, a peak gain of 14.26 dBi at 4.45 GHz, and up to 98% SAR reduction under both 1-g and 10-g mass-averaging criteria. Furthermore, deformation assessments confirm that the antenna maintains robust electromagnetic performance when bent, exhibiting behavior consistent with its planar counterpart. The fabrication process is straightforward, and the measured data exhibit excellent concordance with full-wave simulations in free-space and human-body environments. These results validate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed textile antenna for high-performance wearable and body-centric communication systems.