IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO.

5, MAY 2014

2407

Capacitively Loaded Circularly Polarized

Implantable Patch Antenna for ISM Band
Biomedical Applications
Changrong Liu, Student Member, IEEE, Yong-Xin Guo, Senior Member, IEEE, and Shaoqiu Xiao, Member, IEEE

AbstractA single-fed miniaturized circularly polarized

microstrip patch antenna is designed and experimentally demonstrated for industrial-scientific-medical (2.42.48 GHz) biomedical
applications. The proposed antenna is designed by utilizing the
capacitive loading on the radiator. Compared with the initial
topology of the proposed antenna, the so-called square patch
antenna with a center-square slot, the proposed method has the
advantage of good size reduction and good polarization purity.
The footprint of the proposed antenna is 10
10
1.27 mm .
The simulated impedance, axial ratio, and radiation pattern
are studied and compared in two simulation models: cubic skin
phantom and Gustav voxel human body. The effect of different
body phantoms is discussed to evaluate the sensitivity of the
proposed antenna. The effect of coaxial cable is also discussed.
Two typical approaches to address the biocompatibility issue for
practical applications are reported as well. The simulated and
measured impedance bandwidths in cubic skin phantom are 7.7%
and 10.2%, respectively. The performance of the communication
link between the implanted CP antenna and the external antenna
is also presented.
Index TermsCircularly polarized antenna, communication
link, implantable antenna, industrial scientific medical (ISM), link
margin, small antenna, square patch antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

MPLANTABLE medical devices (IMDs) have the capability to communicate wirelessly with an external device.
These IMDs are receiving great attention for obtaining real time

Manuscript received July 16, 2013; revised February 04, 2014; accepted
February 05, 2014. Date of publication February 20, 2014; date of current
version May 01, 2014. This work was supported in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61372012 and 61271028,
in part by the National Research Foundation, Singapore under the grant
award number NRF-CRP10-2012-01, and in part by the Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities.
C. Liu is with National University of Singapore Suzhou Research Institute,
Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, 215123, the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576,
Singapore, and also with the School of Physical Electronics, University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China (e-mail:
changrongliu@hotmail.com).
Y.-X. Guo is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore and also
with the National University of Singapore Suzhou Research Institute, Suzhou,
Jiangsu Province 215123, China (e-mail: eleguoyx@nus.edu.sg).
S. Xiao is with the School of Physical Electronics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China (e-mail:
xiaoshaoqiu@uestc.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2014.2307341

and stored physiological data in biomedical telemetry [1], [2].

An inductive link is a short-range communication channel requiring a coil antenna of the external device to be in close proximity to the IMD. On the other hand, communications via farfield radio-frequency (RF) telemetry have advantages, such as
achieving longer distances and high data rates. In this connection, research is oriented toward RF-linked implantable medical
devices [2][20]. An implantable antenna is the key component
of RF-linked IMDs, as many challenges arise when designing
implantable antennas that need to meet requirements, such as
small size, wide operating bandwidth, sufficient radiation efficiency, and patient safety.
In [2][4], the guidance of designing and testing an implantable antenna is made in detail. Many research groups
[2][12] have widely utilized planar inverted-F antennas
(PIFAs) to design implantable antennas because of the
simple structure and compact size of PIFAs. In [13], an
implanted H-shaped cavity slot antenna embedded in the
human arm at 2.45 GHz was proposed. A novel differentially
fed dual-band implantable antenna was proposed in [14] for
a fully implantable neuro-microsystem. In [15], a low-profile
coplanar-waveguide (CPW)-fed implantable monopole antenna
was designed without superstrate. Open slots are introduced in
[16] to obtain a wide bandwidth and good size reduction for
designing implantable antennas. In [17], the effect of the human
head on the transmission of RF signals in the medical implant
communications service (MICS) band (402405 MHz) between
the loop antennas that were placed in free space and implanted
in the human head have been studied for medical applications.
In [18], a miniature conformal antenna was designed for the
realization of a complete implantable device. Dipole antennas
were studied for implantable antennas in [19], [21], and [22].
Various frequency bands are approved for medical implants.
These bands include Medical Device Radio Communication
Service (MedRadio, 401406 MHz [3][11], [14][18]) and
industrial scientific medical (ISM) (433434.8 MHz [7], [14],
[16]; 902928 MHz [7]; 2.42.48 GHz [5], [10][13], [16],
[18][20]; and 5.7255.875 GHz). The formerly known MICS
band (402405 MHz) is most commonly used for medical-implant communications. Other frequency bands have also been
suggested for implantable device biotelemetry. In [21] and
[22], the capsule antenna and implantable antenna were designed at the wireless medical telemetry services (WMTS)
band (13951400 MHz).
Communications via far-field RF-linked telemetry can be
hindered by the effects of multipath distortion. In view of

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wireless-access applications, the circularly polarized radiation property is desirable, since the reduction of multipath
and improvement of bit-error-rates can be achieved with the
use of circular polarization instead of linear polarization.
Few research groups have studied circularly polarized (CP)
implantable antennas. In [21], a conformal antenna for the
ingestible biotelemetric capsule system was studied. The offset
conformal meandered dipole was designed with polarization
diversity. A miniaturized cross dipole CP receiver antenna was
also presented.
In this paper, a novel miniaturized capacitively loaded CP
microstrip patch antenna is designed at the operating frequency
of 2.4 GHz. A method of capacitive loading on the radiator
was first used to design a CP implantable antenna. Details
of the antenna design and experiment results are presented
and discussed. The performance of the communication link
between the implanted CP antenna and the external antenna is
also presented.

Fig. 1. Geometry of an implantable patch antenna with a center square slot.

II. CIRCULARLY POLARIZED IMPLANTABLE

PATCH ANTENNA DESIGN
To realize a small-size CP microstrip patch antenna, many
techniques have been developed. These include employing
shorting pins/walls [23], cutting slots in the radiator patch
[24][32], or the ground plane [32][34], embedding tails
along the edge [35], loading metamaterial structures [36], or
transforming the patch antenna into a wire mesh and then
squeezing it in according fashion [37]. Besides these, inductive/capacitive loading on patch [38], [39] is an effective way
to lower the resonance frequency. In [38], a novel capacitively
loaded microstrip loop resonator is developed with smaller size
and a higher Q factor. A miniaturized low-profile monopole
antenna was presented in [39], where the antenna achieved high
gain with omnidirectional and vertically polarization by using
the approach of inductive, top loaded, and inplane capacitive
couplings appropriately.
In this paper, we propose a compact implantable CP patch
antenna with capacitive loading to achieve better impedance
matching and capacitive coupling for effective size reduction.
We first studied the characteristics of an implantable microstrip
patch antenna with a center square-slot, which is an initial
configuration and starting point of the proposed antenna. We
then designed a compact capacitively loaded CP implantable
patch antenna based on the study of the initial configuration
that the patch antenna would have good size reduction and
good impedance matching with the suitable size of a center
square slot.
A. Characteristics of an Implantable Microstrip Patch
Antenna With a Center Square Slot
The initial topology of the implantable antenna shown in
Fig. 1 was designed on a two-layer Rogers 3010 substrate
with dielectric constant
of 10.2, a thickness of 25 mil for
each layer, and a loss tangent
of 0.003. The position
of feed is centered on
in the -axis. Both the size of the
patch and ground are fixed to 9.5 9.5 mm and 10 10 mm,
respectively. The feeding position is fixed at (3.7 mm, 0 mm).

Fig. 2. Cubic skin phantom geometry for the design of an implantable antenna.

Fig. 3. Simulated reflection coefficients with different sizes of the center square
slot.

Fig. 2 shows the cubic skin phantom model. The distance from
the side of the structure to the edge of the skin is 4 cm at both
sides. The distance from the top of the superstrate to the edge
of the skin is 4 mm, and the distance from the bottom of the
substrate to the edge of the skin is 20 mm. The skin electrical
properties (
38,
1.44 S/m [40]) at 2.4 GHz were used
in the one-layer skin simulation model. The size of this cube is
. The Ansoft High Frequency Structure
Simulator (HFSS) was used for the design and analysis.
Fig. 3 shows the simulated reflection coefficients values with
different lengths
of the center square slot. We can see from
Fig. 3 that the resonant frequency of the regular microstrip patch
antenna
0 mm) is about 4.23 GHz with a half wavelength
in the multilayer substrate. The resonant frequency will shift
down from 4.23 to 3.07 GHz when is increased from 0 to
6 mm. The impedance matching of the antenna with a center

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Fig. 4. Simulated real and imaginary input impedances with different sizes of
the center square slot.

square slot is better than that of a regular microstrip patch antenna. From Fig. 4, the input impedance, including real and
imaginary parts of impedance, will increase quickly when is
increased from 0 to 6 mm.
As for typical compact microstrip patch antennas with center
square slots on the radiators operating in the free-space environment, the excited patch surface current path will be longer
for the antenna with a center square slot than for the regular-size
square microstrip antenna. A patch with a center square slot of
increasing side length will make its minimum input impedance
inside the patch quickly increase. Therefore, an impedance
transformer was utilized to obtain good impedance matching
[29][31].
In this condition, the resonant frequency will shift down and
input impedance will increase with an increased length of the
center square slot. Caused by the initial large imaginary part of
input impedance, good impedance matching can be achieved
without an impedance transformer. The center square slot is
employed to have effective size reduction and good impedance
matching for an implantable microstrip patch antenna. Note that
the initial configuration of the implantable antenna has linear
polarization, and CP operation can be easily achieved by protruding a pair of perturbation elements at the inner edge of the
patch antenna with a center-square slot.
B. Compact-Implantable CP Microstrip Patch Antenna With
Capacitive Loading
Based on the study of the initial topology that the patch
antenna would have good size reduction and good impedance
matching with a suitable size of a center square slot, a compact capacitively loaded implantable CP patch antenna was
designed, as shown in Fig. 5. With the capacitive loading [38]
on the three sides of the patch, the patch size can be reduced
with fixed operation frequency. The capacitive couplings at
the center of the patch are to enhance the capacitive effect.
Moreover, slits 16 are employed to lengthen the current path,
thus lowering the resonant frequency. For simplicity, slits 14
have identical dimensions and slits 5 and 6 have identical
dimensions. CP operation was achieved (shown in Fig. 6) by
protruding a pair of perturbation elements 1 and 2 with the
same dimensions of
(shown in Fig. 5) to split the

Fig. 5. Geometry of the proposed CP implantable antenna.

Fig. 6. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the proposed implantable

antenna.
TABLE I
DETAILED DIMENSIONS IN MILLIMETERS

fundamental resonant
mode into two near-degenerate
orthogonal modes with equal amplitudes and 90 phase difference. Table I shows the detailed dimensions. The cubic skin
phantom that is given in Fig. 2 is used to optimize the proposed
antenna.

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Fig. 7. Three types of implantable microstrip patch antenna cases.

Fig. 9. Photograph of the fabricated implantable antenna

Fig. 8. Comparison reflection coefficients of different antenna cases.

TABLE II
SIMULATED RESULTS OF DIFFERENT ANTENNA CASES

Fig. 10. Illustration of the measurement setup.

III. MEASUREMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Fig. 6 shows the simulated impedance bandwidth that the
proposed antenna covers from 2.36 to 2.55 GHz ( 7.74%)
for a reflection coefficient of less than 10 dB and the AR
bandwidth that is covered from 2.44 to 2.48 GHz ( 1.63%)
for axial ratio (AR) 3 dB. The simulated results mean that
the lowering in the center frequency can correspond to an
antenna size reduction of about 72% by using the proposed
design in place of the regular implantable CP microstrip patch
design at a fixed operating frequency. The simulated peak
gain is
22 dBi at 2.45 GHz. The main polarization of this
proposed antenna is right-handed circular polarization (RHCP)
with cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) 22 dB at the
main radiation direction.
For the purpose of analyzing the effect of capacitive loading,
capacitive coupling and slits, antennas with different cases
(shown in Fig. 7) were simulated and compared as shown
in Fig. 8. Note that the CP property was not optimized for
simplicity. Table II lists the detailed simulated results. We
can see from Table II that the resonant frequency would shift
down with additional loading, while impedance matching and
impedance bandwidth remain nearly unchanged.

A. Reflection Coefficient and Communication Link

Fig. 9 shows the fabricated antenna with its superstrate.
The antenna was measured by using a homogeneous mixture
solution proposed in [12]. The recipe is 58.2% deionized
water, 36.7% Triton X-100 (polyethylene glycol mono phenyl
ether) and 5.1% Diethylene glycol butyl ether (DGBE). In the
measurement, a similar volume of skin material was chosen to
demonstrate the design concept.
-parameters were carried out by Rohde & Schwarz ZVA50
vector network analyzer (VNA). Fig. 10 illustrates the communication link of Tx and Rx. In this study, a dipole antenna is
designed as an external antenna to demonstrate the polarization
property of the proposed antenna. Fig. 11 shows the simulated
and measured -parameters. It can be seen from Fig. 11 that the
measured
of the proposed antenna is less than 10 dB in
the frequency range from 2.41 to 2.67 GHz (10.2%). The resonant frequency shift could be the air gap between the substrate
and superstrate. Besides this, the difference could be due to
the fabrication tolerance. The dipole antenna has an impedance
bandwidth of 8.06% (2.382.58 GHz). The communication

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Fig. 11. Measured -parameters of the proposed antenna and external antenna.

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Fig. 13. Reflection coefficients of the proposed antenna simulated in one-layer

skin and voxel human body.

Fig. 14. Simulation models: (a) one-layer skin phantom; (b) three-layer tissue
phantom: case 1, and (c) three-layer tissue phantom: case 2.

Fig. 12. The 3D Gustav voxel human body used for the implantable antenna
design in a human chest.

link of the proposed antenna and the dipole antenna was measured when the dipole was placed at
and 90 , respectively. Note that the distance of Tx and Rx is 200 mm. The
CP purity of the proposed antenna can be calculated by comparing the communication link levels for two orthogonal polarizations. We can obtain good polarization purity at around
2.5 GHz
.
B. Comparative Analysis of Radiation Performance
To study the design in a realistic environment, the proposed
antenna is evaluated within the Gustav voxel human body.
Fig. 12 shows the 3D Gustav voxel human body used for the
implantable design in a human chest. Numerical analyses are
performed using the CST Microwave Suite [41]. Note that the
implant depth
of the proposed antenna is 4 mm.
The simulated impedance, axial ratio (AR) are studied and
compared in two simulation models: cubic skin phantom and
Gustav voxel human body. The respective results are shown in
Fig. 13. As shown in Fig. 13, the resonant frequency point is
shifted from 2.45 to 2.66 GHz. The reasons why the resonant
frequency of the proposed antenna that was simulated in the
human body was shifted from 2.45 to 2.66 GHz could be: 1)
the implant depth would affect the resonant frequency point;
2) the cubic skin phantom shown in Fig. 2 is not very accurate
for the 2.4-GHz ISM band application; 3) the asymmetry of
the human body would affect the polarization property. The
proposed antenna in the three simulation models shown in

Fig. 14 is simulated and compared to evaluate the effect of

implant positions of the implantable antenna. Note that threelayer geometry consists of skin, fat, and muscle tissues. The
dielectric properties of three tissues are taken from [40]. Based
on the simulated results shown in Fig. 15, it is seen that
the resonant frequency of the proposed antenna would have
a significant shift to a higher frequency when the antenna was
implanted in a fat layer.
After discussing this in three-layer planer geometries, we
simulated the proposed antenna in the CST human body with
different implant depths. The simulated results shown in Fig. 16
also demonstrate that the implant depth
could affect the
resonant frequency shift. Moreover, the polarization property
was affected in the human body, as can be seen in Fig. 16,
where the resonant frequency points of two orthogonal modes
are not close to each other. Better polarization
purity can be optimized by the turning pair of perturbation
elements 1 and 2 to achieve near-degenerate orthogonal modes.
The total resonant frequency can be optimized by turning the
resonant length. In this part, we just turned the perturbation
elements
0.8 mm) and implant depth
3 mm)
to obtain better polarization property, as shown in Fig. 17.
The frequency with good circular polarization is 2.46 GHz.
Fig. 18 shows the simulated radiation patterns of the proposed
antenna in the human body at 2.46 GHz. The cross-polarization
discrimination (XPD) is over 20 dB at 2.46 GHz over a wide
range of the beam width (14 dB at
). The realized gain in
the one-layer skin phantom is
22 dBi at 2.45 GHz, while the
realized gain in the Gustav human body model is
20.4 dBi
at 2.46 GHz. Table III shows the specific absorption rate (SAR)
distribution of the proposed antenna embedded in the human
body. When the proposed antenna is assumed to deliver 1 W,
the simulated maximum 1-g and 10-g average SAR values are

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Fig. 17. Performance of the proposed antenna with

in the human body.

0.8 mm,

3 mm

Fig. 15. Performances of the proposed antenna with different simulation

models: (a) reflection coefficients comparison and (b) AR comparison.
Fig. 18. Radiation patterns of the proposed antenna simulated in the voxel
human body at 2.46 GHz.

TABLE III
SIMULATED MAXIMUM SAR (INPUT POWER 1 W), AND MAXIMUM INPUT
POWER FOR SATISFYING THE SAR STANDARD IN THE HUMAN BODY

Fig. 16. Performance of the proposed antenna with different implant depths.

213 and 26.6 W/kg, respectively. Therefore, the allowed transmitter power values are 7.51 and 75.2 mW to satisfy the 1-g and
10-g SAR regulation, respectively [42], [43]. In [44], the output
power of the transmitter is 14 dBm ( 0.04 mW), which is
much lower than the allowed transmitter power. SAR should
not be a concern in this condition.
C. Effect of Different Phantoms
To evaluate the sensitivity of the proposed antenna, whether
it could be used in other specific biomedical applications or be

implanted in other positions, the proposed antenna is embedded

in four different body phantoms as below:
1) Phantom 1: skin phantom
;
2) Phantom 2 [19]: three-layered phantom
;
3) Phantom 3 [18]: cylinder muscle phantom
;
4) Phantom 4 [20]: scalp phantom
.
Fig. 19 shows the detailed body phantoms (2, 3, and 4).
Fig. 20 reports the simulated results with different phantoms.
The resonant frequencies of 2.45, 2.60, 2.40, and 2.40 GHz
were found for the skin, three-layered, muscle, and scalp
phantoms, respectively. The resonant frequency shift is mainly
due to the change of relative dielectric constant, especially in
the three-layered phantom as the relative dielectric constant of
fat is very small compared with other tissues. Similar resonant
frequencies are obtained between muscle and scalp phantoms.

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Fig. 19. Cross view of different body phantoms: (a) the three-layered phantom,
(b) the cylinder muscle phantom, and (c) the scalp phantom.

Fig. 21. Description of different models: (a) case 1, (b) case 2, (c) case 3, and
(d) case 4.

Fig. 20. Performances of the proposed antenna with different dielectric properties: (a) reflection coefficients comparison and (b) AR comparison.

Moreover, the proposed antenna embedded in muscle and scalp

phantoms can still maintain good impedance matching and
circular polarization, as shown in Fig. 20(b). The results show
that the proposed antenna can be optimized for other specific
biomedical applications.
D. Effect of Coaxial Cable
Referring to [18], four different simulation models are listed
in Fig. 21 to evaluate the feeding coaxial cable effect.
Case 1) The coaxial cable is in direct contact with the skin,
as shown in Fig. 21(a).
Case 2) A biocompatible material (Silastic MDX4-4210
biomedical-grade base elastomer (
3.3,
0.01 S/m, thickness
0.05 mm) [45] shell surrounds the cable and ground plane, as shown in
Fig. 21(b).
Case 3) The length of coaxial cable is reduced to 1 mm, as
shown in Fig. 21(c).

Fig. 22. Performances of the proposed antenna with different cases: (a) reflection coefficients comparison and (b) AR comparison.

Case 4) The whole implant device consists of an implantable antenna, biocompatible housing, and
other electronics, as shown in Fig. 21(d); the other
electronics are set as perfect electric conductors
(PEC) in HFSS.
Simulated reflection coefficients for the four different cases
are shown in Fig. 22. The results indicate that small coupling
exists between the currents flowing on the external metal of the
cable and the body phantom [18]. The impedance matching of
the proposed antenna in all of the simulation models is good. AR
performance in case 4 means that the packaging of the entire implant system would have a little effect on the polarization prop-

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TABLE IV
PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS FOR FOUR TYPES OF SIMULATION MODELS
AT 2.45 GHz

Fig. 23. Two approaches to address the biocompatibility issue for practical applications: (a) proposed antenna with biocompatible material and (b) proposed
antenna with encased biocompatible material.

erty. Table IV shows the radiation performance of the proposed

antenna in the different models. The realized gain was improved
with packaging, but AR and XPD were degraded. The proposed
antenna can be further optimized for final real applications.
The measurement setup shown in Fig. 10 did not consider the
effect of reflected signals. It should be more accurate if the proposed antenna is tested in the chamber environment as reported
in [20]. After the discussions about the cables effect, we think
that the test has demonstrated the antennas performance.
E. Biocompatible Insulation
In this design, Rogers RO3010 is used as a substrate and superstrate. However, implantable antennas need to be biocompatible with the surrounding tissue, since Rogers RO3010 is not a
biocompatible material. There are two typical approaches to address the biocompatibility issue for practical applications. One
is to design antennas directly on biocompatible materials, such
as macor, teflon, and ceramic alumina [4]; the other one is to encase the implantable antenna with a thin layer of low-loss biocompatible coating [45]. This discussion is based on the simulation model shown in Fig. 2.
For the first approach [shown in Fig. 23(a)], Rogers RO3010
10.2) is replaced by biocompatible alumina
ceramic
9.8). Fig. 24 shows that the resonant frequency is
shifted from 2.45 to 2.5 GHz. This is reasonable, since the relative dielectric constant of alumina ceramic is a little smaller
than that of RO3010. For further realistic applications, biocompatible metals, such as silver palladium (Ag/Pd), can be used instead of copper to achieve the antenna structure on the biocompatible materials. In further study, the proposed antenna with
biocompatible materials can be optimized to the desired resonant frequency.
The other one is to encase the proposed implantable antenna
with a thin layer of low-loss biocompatible coating as shown
in Fig. 23(b). A biocompatible material Silastic MDX4-4210
biomedical-grade base elastomer (
3.3,
0.01 S/m) [45]
is used here to evaluate the coating effect.
Note that the thickness of encased biocompatible material
may affect the antenna performance, and encased biocompatible

Fig. 24. Performances of the proposed antenna with different materials: (a)
reflection coefficients comparison and (b) AR comparison.

material should be taken into consideration for practical antenna

designs [4], [46]. We can see from Fig. 25 that the thinner the
encased biocompatible material is, the less the frequency shifts.
When the thickness of encased biocompatible material is 0.05
or 0.01 mm, good polarization purity can also be achieved even
if the resonant frequency has a little shift. The proposed antenna
with an encased biocompatible coating needs to be reoptimized
to enable ISM band operation.
IV. COMMUNICATION LINK
Assuming far-field communication, the link power budget
can be described in terms of [13]
Link margin dB

Link

Required
(1)

where is the transmit power,

is the transmit antenna gain,
is the path loss (free space),
is the receive antenna gain,
and
is the noise power density.
According to the free-space reduction in signal strength with
the distance between the transmitter and receiver, the path loss
can be calculated as
(2)
where

is the distance between the Tx and Rx.

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TABLE V
PARAMETERS OF THE LINK BUDGET

Fig. 25. Performances of the proposed antenna with/without encasing silicone:

(a) reflection coefficients comparison and (b) AR comparison.
Fig. 26. Simulated link margin of the proposed CP implantable antenna.

Consider the impedance mismatch loss

(3)
where is the appropriate reflection coefficient.
As for the proposed antenna, note that the antenna operates
at 2.46 GHz with good circular polarization (shown in Fig. 17),
while
at 2.46 GHz is
8.3 dB. The impedance mismatch loss of the transmitter and implantable antenna could not
be neglected. The impedance mismatch loss is 0.695 dB at
2.46 GHz.
For the Rx antenna, we could consider one exterior linearpolarized (LP) dipole antenna with a realized gain of 2.15 dBi
and another exterior CP antenna with a realized gain of 2.15
dBi. Note that the Tx antenna has circular polarization, and the
polarization mismatching losses are 0 dB and 3 dB when
the Rx antenna has circular polarization and linear polarization,
respectively. The impedance mismatch loss of the receiver and
Rx antenna is neglected in this condition. The link margin can
be calculated by using the parameters listed in Table V [13].
Fig. 26 shows the detailed link margin with distance. To make
wireless communication possible, the link margin should be
better than 0 dB. According to the simulated results, it is possible to use wireless communications when the distance of Rx
and Tx is less than 10 m when the Rx antenna is with CP and
less than 7 m when the Rx antenna is with LP.

V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a compact implantable CP microstrip
patch antenna for the 2.45-GHz ISM band. First, the characteristic of an implantable microstrip patch antenna with a center
square slot was studied. A center square slot is employed to
have effective size reduction and good impedance matching
for the implantable microstrip patch antenna. Second, a compact capacitively loaded CP implantable patch antenna was
designed. The simulated impedance, AR, and radiation pattern
are studied and compared in two simulation models: cubic skin
phantom in HFSS and Gustav voxel human body in CST. The
cubic skin phantom model was used for the numerical and experimental analysis. This simple model can significantly reduce
the optimization time. After the proposed antenna in different
body phantoms is discussed, the proposed antenna can still
contain good impedance matching. Resonant frequency shift
and polarization property can be re-optimized with specific
real biomedical applications. Finally, the proposed antenna was
embedded in a Gustav voxel human body to study the design
in a realistic environment. The proposed antenna can achieve
good polarization purity by turning the perturbation elements
and implant depth, as shown in Fig. 17. In addition, the SAR
distribution and radiation patterns are presented. The proposed
antenna was measured in a one-layer skin environment, and

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the measured results showed good agreement with the simulated results, including impedance bandwidth and polarization
property.
The feeding cable effect was discussed, as the measurement
setup is unrealistic for real applications. Fig. 21 presents four
different simulation models to evaluate the feeding coaxial
cable effect and packaging problem. The results indicate small
coupling between the cable and the body phantom. Impedance
matching is good in all of the simulation models. AR performance in case 4 means that the packaging of the entire implant
system would have little effect on the polarization property.
The realized gain was improved with packaging, but AR and
XPD should be optimized in further research.
The biocompatibility issue should be addressed for implantable antennas. Two typical approaches for practical
applications were studied and compared. In the first approach,
the needed operation frequency can be easily optimized. In the
other approach, the thickness of the biocompatible material for
the coating would affect the resonant frequency and AR of the
proposed antenna. Thus, we should consider the thickness of the
coating when using the second approach for biocompatibility.
Finally, the link margin for the proposed antenna and exterior CP/LP antennas is characterized to demonstrate its wireless
communication ability.
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Changrong Liu (S12) was born in Jiangsu, China,

in 1986. He received the B.E degree in electronic
information science and technology and the M.E.
degree in radio physics from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC),
Chengdu, China, in 2008 and 2011, respectively,
where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in
radio physics.
From 2010 to 2011, he was a Visiting Student in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
NUS, Singapore. Since 2012, he has been a Visiting
Scholar at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. His main research
interests include LTCC-based millimeter-wave antenna array design; circularly
polarized beam-steering antenna array; and implantable antennas for biomedical
applications, including wireless data telemetry and power transfer.
Mr. Liu is a reviewer of IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION
LETTERS. He was the recipient of the Best Student Paper Award at the 2011
National Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Waves, Qingdao, China.

2417

Yong-Xin Guo (SM05) received the B.Eng. and

M.Eng. degrees in electronic engineering from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing,
China, in 1992 and 1995, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree in electronic engineering from City University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, in 2001.
He was with the Institute for Infocomm Research,
Singapore, as a Research Scientist, from 2001 to
2009. He joined the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering (ECE), National University
of Singapore (NUS), as an Assistant Professor in
2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2013. He is also
Director of Center for Microwave and Radio Frequency at the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NUS. Concurrently, he is a Senior
Investigator at the National University of Singapore Suzhou Research Institute
(NUSRI), Suzhou, China, and Director of Center of Advanced Microelectronic
Devices, NUSRI. He has authored or coauthored 137 international journal papers and 152 international conference papers. So far, his publications have been
cited more than 1189 times and the H-index is 22 (source: Scopus). He holds
one granted U.S. patent and four filed U.S. provisional patents. His current
research interests include microstrip antennas for wireless communications,
implantable/wearable antennas and body channel modeling for biomedical
applications, wireless power and RF energy harvesting, microwave circuits,
and monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit modeling and design.
Dr. Guo is the General Chair for 2015 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave
Workshop Series on Advanced Materials and Processes for RF and THz Applications (IMWS-AMP 2015), Suzhou, China. He was the General Chair for IEEE
MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series 2013 on RF and Wireless
Technologies for biomedical and Healthcare Applications (IMWS-Bio 2013)
in Singapore. He served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) Co-Chair
for the IEEE International Symposium on Radio Frequency Integration Technology (RFIT2009). He has been a TPC member and session chair for numerous
conferences and workshops. He has also been on the editorial boards of the International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering, and
International Journal of Microwave Science and Technology. He is serving as an
Associate Editor for IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS
(AWPL). He was a recipient of the Young Investigator Award in 2009, National
University of Singapore. He received the 2013 Raj Mittra Travel Grant Senior
Researcher Award.

Shaoqiu Xiao (M05) received Ph.D. degree in electromagnetic field and microwave engineering from
the University of Electronic Science and Technology
of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2003.
In 2004, he joined UESTC as an Assistant
Professor. From 2004 to 2006, he worked for the
Wireless Communications Laboratory, National
Institute of Information and Communications Technology of Japan (NICT), Singapore, as a Researcher
with the focus on the planar antenna and smart antenna design and optimization. From 2006 to 2010,
he worked for UESTC as an Associate Professor and now he is working for
UESTC as a Professor. His current research interests include planar antenna and
phased array, microwave passive circuits, and time-reversal electromagnetics.
He has authored/coauthored more than 160 technical journals, conference
papers, books, and book chapters.