Flexible Microstrip antenna for skin contact application

Abstract

Microstrip antennas are finding a growing medical application in imaging, diagnosis, and treatment. We propose to design and fabricate a flexible microstrip antenna that can be placed in contact with a synthetic skin layer, that has similar electric properties to human breast tumor tissue, as far dielectric permittivity and impedance are concerned, in order to study the interaction of the antenna with the tissue. The prototype can be considered as the building block of an array for monitoring a breast tumor tissue at a relatively low power level and 2.45 GHz unlicensed frequency, without any requirement of adding a matching medium. Analytical results, showing the return loss and various radiation pattern with and without the phantom skin, of the designed patch, using high frequency simulation software , ansoft – HFSS , are presented and discussed. The antenna will be fabricated on a 1.6 mm FR4 dielectric layer , covered with very thin copper layers on both sides . the return loss and radiation patterns will be measured in house. This diagnoses technique promises a competitively easier and safer method than mammography, tomography and other imaging techniques , in which high intensity X-rays for the detection of breast cancer is used.