Four-port dual-band textile MIMO antenna for biomedical health monitoring systems: on-body mutual coupling reduction characterization

The paper outlines a methodology to diminish mutual coupling in 4-port dual-band MIMO textile antenna for biomedical applications. This antenna leverages MIMO technology and Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) for operation in two distinct frequency bands at (3.5 & 2.45 GHz). The antenna is made up of four octagonal patch antennas, each having a bar and a split-ring (SR) slot with 47.2 × 31 mm² dimensions for each patch. A hybrid mutual coupling (MC) approach was investigated with closely spaced patches (up to 0.05λ). Various bending setups have been selected along with flat case to examine the antennas’ resilience which demonstrate such agreement between measured and simulated findings. Furthermore, the MC is only −20 dB, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) is 0.001, and maximum peak measured gain of 5.2 dBi is achieved with lowest peak specific absorption rate (SAR) value. Even when bent at a 60° angle along with y-axis and x-axis, the antenna retains a decent gain of 1.861 dBi in the low frequency region and 5.479 dBi at high frequency band. Surprisingly, the antenna outperforms the attenuation produced by the lossy effects of the human body, indicating a favorable alignment between the modelled and observed findings.