Narrow-band Circularly Polarized Antenna for Medical Microwave Imaging and Health Monitoring Applications

In this paper, a circularly polarized printed monopole antenna (CPPMA) is proposed for medical microwave imaging and health monitoring applications. The proposed CPPMA is optimized to operate at the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. A prototype of the designed antenna is fabricated and printed on the low-cost FR-4 substrate that has a compact size of 34 × 28 × 1.5 mm³. The simulated results indicate that the designed CPPMA operates between 2.425 GHz and 2.475 GHz while the measured results range between 2.32 GHz and 2.515 GHz. The designed CPPMA also reveals a circular polarization performance at 2.45 GHz (2.4386 GHz - 2.4633 GHz). The suitability of CPPMA for microwave imaging is confirmed by checking its aptitudes to detect the presence of breast tumors and brain strokes. A great detection capability is achieved for breast tumors and brain strokes of various sizes inserted at different positions with a high sensitivity to changes or anomalies in the dielectric properties of human tissues. In addition, the usefulness of the proposed CPPMA for wearable application is justified experimentally. Excellent agreement is achieved between the simulated results and the measured ones.