Design and experimental characterization of on-skin loop antenna for next 5G backscattering-based communications

Backscattering-based communications are promising solutions for large scale body-centric monitoring systems, for the low power requirements and the simple and lightweight electronics. Currently, UHF frequency band represents the golden standard, mainly thanks to the well assessed RadioFrequency IDentification (RFID) platforms. However, early studies proposed the exploitation to the upcoming 5G communication infrastructures to overcome the limitations in bit-rate and bandwidth and the need of a dedicated reading platform to interact with the tags. The aim of the work is to experimentally verify, from the antenna perspective, the possibility to adopt the 5G 3.6GHz frequency band for the next generation body-centric backscattering systems. An epidermal antenna is hence designed and prototyped and measurements of input impedance in real conditions, e.g. on the human body, are presented.