Next-generation communication systems and wearable technologies aim to achieve high data rates, low energy consumption, and massive connections because of the extensive increase in the number of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and wearable devices. These devices will be employed for many services such as cellular, environment monitoring, telemedicine, biomedical, and smart traffic, etc. Therefore, it is challenging for the current communication devices to accommodate such a high number of services. This article summarizes the motivation and potential of the 6G communication system and discusses its key features. Afterward, the current state-of-the-art of 5G antenna technology, which includes existing 5G antennas and arrays and 5G wearable antennas, are summarized. The article also described the useful methods and techniques of exiting antenna design works that could mitigate the challenges and concerns of the emerging 5G and 6G applications. The key features and requirements of the wearable antennas for next-generation technology are also presented at the end of the paper. 

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A Road towards 6G Communication—A Review of 5G Antennas, Arrays, and Wearable Devices

Next-generation communication systems and wearable technologies aim to achieve high data rates, low energy consumption, and massive connections because of the extensive increase in the number of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and wearable devices. These devices will be employed for many services such as cellular, environment monitoring, telemedicine, biomedical, and smart traffic, etc. Therefore, it is challenging for the current communication devices to accommodate such a high number of services. This article summarizes the motivation and potential of the 6G communication system and discusses its key features. Afterward, the current state-of-the-art of 5G antenna technology, which includes existing 5G antennas and arrays and 5G wearable antennas, are summarized. The article also described the useful methods and techniques of exiting antenna design works that could mitigate the challenges and concerns of the emerging 5G and 6G applications. The key features and requirements of the wearable antennas for next-generation technology are also presented at the end of the paper.

The high demand use of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) in wireless body area network (WBAN) based medical applications opens a way for many types of research in the current decade. The continuous health monitoring of the patients during normal daily activities is the primary concentration of the WBAN system. Many studies and analyses are taken into and performance is evaluated. The major sections which are discussed in this paper are UWB technologies, on-off body communication; WBAN ideas are discussed to overcome several research drawbacks.

A Review on UWB Antenna Sensor for Wireless Body Area Networks

Performance Analysis of Novel Wearable Textile Antenna Design for Medical and Wireless Applications

One of the major challenges in the development of wearable antennas is to design an antenna that can at the same time satisfy technical requirements, be aesthetically acceptable, and be suitable for wearable applications. In this paper, a novel wearable antenna is proposed—textile realization of a slotted waveguide antenna. The antenna is realized using conductive fabric to manufacture the walls of a rectangular waveguide in which the slots were cut out. All connections and cuts are sewn with conductive thread taking over advantages of the traditional process of manufacturing textile objects. The developed slotted waveguide array prototype, containing three slots and designed for operation in the 5.8-GHz ISM band, is experimentally characterized and compared to an equivalent metallic antenna. The achieved operating bandwidth is larger than 300 MHz in both cases. The measured gain of a textile slotted waveguide array is around 9 dBi with a radiation efficiency larger than 50% in the whole operating bandwidth, i.e., the textile array showed a 2 dB lower gain in comparison to the metallic counterpart. The gain is stable in the whole bandwidth and the radiation patterns do not differ. The results demonstrated that such textile antennas are suitable for body-centric communication and sensor systems and can be integrated into clothing, e.g., into a smart safety vest or into a uniform. Further analysis of various realizations of slotted waveguide antennas is presented showing that different versions of the proposed antenna can be used in all three off-body, on-body, and in-body communication scenarios.

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Textile Slotted Waveguide Antennas for Body-Centric Applications

Wearable antennas have received a great deal of popularity in recent years owing to their enticing characteristics and opportunities to realize lightweight, compact, low-cost, and versatile wireless communications and environments. These antennas must be conformal, and they must be built using lightweight materials and constructed in a low-profile configuration when mounted on various areas of the human body. These antennas ought to be able to function close to the human body with limited deterioration. These criteria render the layout of wearable antennas demanding, particularly when considering factors such as investigating the usability of textile substrates, high conductive materials during fabrication processes, and the effect of body binding scenarios on the performance of the design. Although there are minor differences in magnitude based on the implementations, several of these problems occur in the body-worn deployment sense. This study addresses the numerous problems and obstacles in the production of wearable antennas, their variety of materials, and the techniques of manufacturing alongside with bending scheme. This is accompanied by a summary of creative features and their respective approaches to address these problems recently raised by work in this area by the science community. Â© 2020. All Rights Reserved.

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and Azura Che Soh

Papers

Recent Advances in Wearable Antenna Technologies: A Review