Inkjet-printed antenna on thin PET substrate for dual band Wi-Fi communications

In this paper, we propose a high gain antenna operating over dual band of 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz. The proposed antenna is designed by finite element method (FEM) based Ansys high frequency structure simulator (HFSS). We use conductive ink of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and commercial Dimatix material inkjet printer (DMP-3000) to print the proposed antenna on 50-micron thick, transparent and flexible polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) substrate. To characterize the fabricated antenna, we use vector network analyzer (VNA) and obtain reflection coefficients of −16.4 dB at 900 MHz and −26 dB at 2.4 GHz, which accord with the HFSS simulation results. HFSS simulated results provide antenna gains as high as 16.74 and 16.24 dBi at 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz, respectively and 23.33 and 11.66 % of −10 dB fractional bandwidth at 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz, respectively. These results suggest that the proposed high gain antenna can be used for dual band Wi-Fi and wearable devices as well.