Compact BLE Antenna With A Modified PIFA Configuration For Wearable EMG Monitor
Compact BLE Antenna With A Modified PIFA Configuration For Wearable EMG Monitor
Abstract
While the BLE is very popular for indoor communication, the antenna for the BLE in wearable sensor systems is lack investi-
gation. This work proposes the BLE antenna for a wearable sensor, which is (i) small enough to fit in a compact device and
(ii) tolerant against the nearby medium change.
1
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXXX 2017 1
12 mm
propose consists of a main patch and a parasitic element to broaden PCB circuit area
the antenna bandwidth. The end of the parasitic element is shorted Battery area
to miniaturize the antenna to 25 by 10.8 millimeters, fitting well Device bottom cover
inside a watch-type wearable device. Also, the complete ground
layer of the antenna makes it radiate well in the outward direction, 50 mm
and minimally interact with the back-side medium. This results in
the reflection coefficient being insensitive to the medium change on the backside. The proposed antenna has a peak
gain of 3.62 dBi along with 20% efficiency and the impedance bandwidth of 80 MHz (2.4 ∼2.48 GHz). To examine
the communicative operation of the antenna in practice, the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) of the complete
prototype device with the antenna is measured in various postures and orientations, demonstrating reliable connectivity
within a typical indoor distance of 10 meters. Lastly, the antenna is embedded in a wearable device, demonstrating
electromyography’s wireless monitoring.
Index Terms— Antenna input impedance, reliability testing, wearable device, BLE communication
90Ū
U.FL plug to 90Ū
U.FL plug cable
Device top cover
Antenna position W
Air gap 8 via
feeding
12 mm
PCB circuit area
Battery area Top layer
Device bottom cover
50 mm
(a) (b) via 6
and the antenna mounted underneath the top cover of the via
(a) (b)
(a) Step I
Step II
Step III
(c) (d)
Fig. 4: Antenna design procedure. (a) Step I, (b) Step II, (c)
Step III, (d) S-parameters.
2) Step II: To improve the impedance matching and band- Fig. 5: Antenna design procedure Step III. (a) Shorting pin at
width, a parasitic element is added as seen in Fig. 4(b). When various locations, (b) S-parameters study.
the structure is simulated using a commercial electromagnetic
solver (the CST Microwave Studio), this choice yields a 5) Step V: After the antenna configuration is determined,
better impedance matching with a small frequency shift of the the parametric study is carried out to finalize the antenna
resonant frequency to 3.2 GHz. The bandwidth enhancement geometry. For this purpose, the feeding slot width Sw , the
is due to the two similar current paths produced by the patch feed line width wf , the gap between the main patch and the
itself and by the added parasitic element [26]–[30]. parasitic patch wn2 , and the shorting pin position Sn shown
3) Step III: To reduce the size of the antenna the shorting in Fig. 7 are chosen as the parameters to tune the resonance
pin method is used [31]. The shorting pin is made at the end frequency and the bandwidth. When those parameters vary, the
of the parasitic patch in Fig. 4(c). The S-parameters for the S-parameter results are shown in Fig. 8(a-d). As the feeding
three steps are plotted in Fig. 4(d). It can be seen that the slot width Sw and feeding line width wf increases from 1.3
resonance frequency appears close to the target frequency. mm to 1.7 mm and 0.3 mm to 0.7 mm, the resonant frequency
The effect of shorting pin location on the resonance behavior rarely changes but the impedance matching improves at certain
of the antenna is investigated in Fig. 5(a). As the shorting cases in Fig. 8(a-b). A large frequency shift can be observed
pin moves from the point A to F , the length of current path when the gap variation wn2 changes from 0.2 mm to 0.6 mm
4 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXXX 2017
(a) (b)
(a) (b)
Fig. 6: Antenna design procedure Step IV. (a) U.FL connection
Fig. 9: Tissue effect study. (a) Simulation model (antenna
details, (b) resonance behavior on the depth of inset feed.
inside the device, over the tissue), (b) resonance behavior.
and also when the shorting pin position Sn does from 1.0 mm Top Layer
to 4.0 mm. The above study helps to fine tune the resonance
Top Layer
behavior of the antenna at the required frequency band.
(a) (b)
(a) (b)
B. Measurement Results of the Proposed Antenna
The reference and the proposed antenna are fabricated
as shown in Fig. 10(a) and (b), respectively. The reference
antenna is vertically placed at the edge of the wearable device
as shown in Fig. 11(a) and (b), while the proposed antenna
is attached to the bottom surface of the top cover as initially
intended (Fig. 11(c) and (d)). The U.FL cable allows one to
(c) (d) place the antenna at a preferred position considering other
requirements of the device design, such as the position of a
Fig. 8: Antenna design procedure Step V. (a) Feeding slot visual interface for the device. Most importantly, the complete
width variations, (b) Feed line width variations, (c) Gap ground plane on the other side of the two-layered antenna can
between the main patch and parasitic patch variations, (d) effectively block the back radiation, and hence the antenna
Shorting pin position variation (along the arrow direction in performance is less affected by the medium beneath the
Fig. 7). wearable device.
To evaluate and compare the effect of a nearby medium for
The simulation model to consider the tissue medium below two antennas, the antennas are installed inside the wearable
the wearable device embedding the antenna is studied after the device (Fig. 11) and the S-parameters are measured on and
antenna optimization as shown in Fig. 9(a). It is observed that off the body. A vector network analyzer (VNA; Anritsu
due to the shielding by the ground plane of the antenna itself MS46122A) was used to measure the S-parameters. To mimic
and the conducting sheet of the PCB circuitry, the resonance the on-body situation, a pork meat piece of about 20-mm
behavior remains the same in Fig. 9(b). The final dimensions thickness with the same size of the device was placed below
of the proposed antenna are summarized in Table II. the wearable device. Fig. 12 shows the S-parameter results
AUTHOR et al.: PREPARATION OF PAPERS FOR IEEE TRANSACTIONS AND JOURNALS (FEBRUARY 2017) 5
U.FL cable Antenna Antenna location TABLE III: Comparison with previous antennas for smart-
watch, body-area networks, and tele-medicine applications at
2.4 GHz
Ref. Size Feeding Configuration
LED [37] 45 × 19 mm2 CPW PIFA
[38] 60 × 20 mm2 Inset Patch
[39] 81 × 81 mm2 CPW Slot antenna
[40] 38 × 38 mm2 Contact Inverted-L Antenna
Device inside view Device top view [41] 66 × 66 mm2 CPW Rectangular Patch
(a) (b) [42] 66 × 42 mm2 MS line Rectangular patch
U.FL cable Antenna location This work 25 × 10.8 mm2 U.FL Modified PIFA
Antenna
that the S-parameter of the reference antenna shifts when the
device is placed on the tissue. The shift of resonant frequency
can affect the performance of the antenna depending on the
LED user environment, which is not desirable. In contrast, the
Top cover proposed antenna shows a stable S-parameter regardless of
Device inside view Device top view
whether the device is on or off the tissue in Fig. 12(b). It
(c) (d)
can be inferred that the performance of the proposed antenna
Fig. 11: Images of the prototype wearable device including is hardly affected by the user environment. Based on the 3:1
antennas. (a) Inside view of the wearable device when the VSWR (S11 ≤ −6 dB [33]–[36]) impedance matching for the
reference antenna is installed, (b) Top view of the wearable mobile antenna requirement, the impedance bandwidth was
device when the top cover is closed, (c) Inside view of the measured to be 80 MHz from 2.4∼2.48 GHz with the proposed
wearable device when the proposed antenna is installed, (d) antenna on tissue.
Top view of the device when the top cover is closed. Besides, the radiation patterns were measured in an anechoic
chamber along with the tissue (pork meat) and shown in
Fig. 13. Fig. 13(a) shows the principle planes (xy, xz and yz)
0
of radiation from the device when the device is placed with its
normal direction along the z-axis. As conventionally defined in
S-Parameter (dB)
-10
the spherical coordinate [2], the angle θ and φ refer to the polar
-20 and the azimuthal angle, respectively. It can be observed that
the peak radiation is observed in broadside directions around
-30 w/o tissue
+50◦ for yz plane, around +90◦ in xz plane. For the xy plane,
it is almost uniform and nulls are observed at ±90◦ .
with tissue
-40
2.1 2.4 2.7 3.0
Frequency (GHz) The proposed antenna is compared with the reported an-
tennas utilized for the smartwatch, body-area network and
(a) (b)
tele-medicine applications at 2.4 GHz, in terms on the size,
Fig. 12: Measured S-parameters of (a) reference antenna and feeding techniques and the design configuration in Table III.
(b) proposed antenna. For each antenna, the S-parameter was Compared to the existing solutions, the proposed antenna
measured with and without tissue behind the wearable device exhibits the smallest size by the techniques of modified PIFA
in which the antenna is placed. with the shorting pin.
Since the antenna design is compact in size and demon-
Antenna location
strates little medium dependency, the proposed antenna is
chosen for the watch-type wearable device.
RSSI (dBm)
reader records the strength of the received signal at a fixed -70 free space
position.
-80
The measurement scenarios for the wearable device to work
on the human body are shown in Fig. 14. The external reader -90
2 4 6 8 10
is placed on a computer table with the height of 70 cm. In Distance Dx (m)
the first scenario, the device is worn on the wrist facing the
(a) (b)
external reader and the distance Dx between transceivers is
varied up to 10 m (Fig. 14(a)). The RSSI measured by the -60
external reader is presented in Fig. 14(b). It can be observed
RSSI (dBm)
that the device can operate well up to the range of 10 m, where -70
in which the device is wore on the wrist, inserted in the (c) (d)
front pocket, or attached on the back side of upper waist
as shown in Fig. 14(c), (e), and (g). The second scenario -60
RSSI (dBm)
distance from the reader and turning in the clockwise direction ɂ -70
-90
by considering the illustration of the coordinate space shown 0 90 180 270 360
in Fig. 13(a) and Fig. 14(c). For both situations, the RSSI is w
w Rotation angle ( )
recorded and plotted in Fig. 14(d). The different orientation of (e) (f)
the device inside the pocket makes the maximum RSSI appear
at a different rotation angle from the case when the device is -60
worn on the wrist. One can also observe that the RSSI level
RSSI (dBm)
gets lower when the user is rotated by around 180◦ obviously -70
-90
The third scenario is shown in Fig. 14(e). In this scenario, 0 90 180 270 360
Rotation angle ( )
the user is in the attention position, where the device is again
worn on a wrist or inserted in the front pocket. The user (g) (h)
rotates in the same way as in Fig. 14(c) and the signal strength Fig. 14: The setup and the measurement results of the RSSI.
is measured as Fig. 14(f). For the wrist case, the rotation (a) Measurement setup for the first scenario in which distance
angle with the maximum strength shifts to 90◦ because the Dx between the transceivers varies. (b) Signal strength on
orientation of the device has changed from Fig. 14(c). In other distance Dx variations. For (c, e, g), the distance between the
words, when the user is rotated by 90◦ , the reader is in the transceivers is fixed to be 1.2 m and the inset figures defines
broadside direction of the antenna. The front-pocket case has the angle of rotation θ. For (c, e), the device is either on
the similar trend as the front-pocket case of Fig. 14(c) because a wrist or inside the pocket. (c) Posture of the user for the
the orientation of the device has not changed. second scenario. (e) Posture of the user for the third scenario.
The last scenario is when the device is attached on the back (g) Device on back side of the upper waist with two different
side at the upper waist as presented in Fig. 14(g). The device orientations. (d, f, h) presents the measured signal strength for
is placed with two different orientations as shown by the illus- the rotation θ given in (c, e, g), respectively.
trations of the coordinate space in (g). When the user makes
the rotation, the signal strengths are plotted in Fig. 14(h). It
is observed that in the case of the waist measurements, the
IV. S YSTEM I NTEGRATION FOR EMG M ONITORING
maximum RSSI occurs at θ = 180◦ because at this angle, the
device and reader are facing each other. In all the experiments The proposed antenna is integrated with a wearable elec-
of the above scenarios, the RSSI remains in the affordable tromyography (EMG) monitoring device. The EMG is a
range that the device is connected, which indicates the reliable common clinical test used to assess the function of muscles
operation of indoor communication as a wearable device. and the nerves that control them. The EMG can be detected
either directly by inserting electrodes or indirectly with surface
AUTHOR et al.: PREPARATION OF PAPERS FOR IEEE TRANSACTIONS AND JOURNALS (FEBRUARY 2017) 7
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8 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXXX 2017