Polymeric ferrite sheets for SAR reduction of
wearable antennas
R. Augustine, T. Alves, T. Sarrebourse, B. Poussot,
K.T. Mathew and J.-M. Laheurte
Reduction of specific absorption rate (SAR) has now become a buzz
word because of the growing health concerns over microwave
exposure. Ferrites are found to be effective in diminishing electromag-
netic influence. In this reported work, flexible polymeric ferrite sheets
are characterised on the basis of their shielding efficiencies. SAR
measurements are carried out with a planar wearable antenna and poly-
meric ferrite shielding to confirm its competence.
Introduction: In recent years specific absorption rate (SAR) has received
ever increasing attention as the common public has become aware of the
harmful effects of high volume microwave exposure. It could create hot
spots in the human body and may lead to the destruction of tissues. In appli-
cations where antennas have to be placed in the proximity of the human
body (portable or body-worn devices, Body Area Networks, pagers,
etc.), it would be desirable to have a low SAR system. In the work reported
in the Letter, two different polymeric ferrite sheets (PFS) were tested for
reduction of SAR at 2.4 GHz. PFS is a solid solution of ferrite in a
polymer base. These ferrite sheets are used as protective shielding. The
antenna used for the study is an integrated inverted-F antenna (IIFA).
This antenna is characterised by the lack of backing ground plane.
The use of polymeric sheets has various aspects: (a) from the antenna
designer point of view; (b) to freeze the resonant frequency and the effi-
ciency performance in spite of the variety of body environments, and (c)
from the user point of view, to reduce the SAR of portable devices. This
Letter mainly focuses on the SAR reduction aspect of the problem for an
antenna located on the torso. It has been shown elsewhere [1] that ferrites
are useful to keep the resonant frequency stable whatever the antenna
location on the body and relative position above the skin. This result was
obtained with efficiency values (roughly 10 to 15%) comparable or
better than those obtained for antennas without ferrite backing directly
put on the skin or 2 to 3 mm above.
Characterisation of polymeric ferrite sheets: Two different types of
polymeric ferrite (solid solution of ferric oxides-Fe2O3 in polymer
base) sheets are subjected to study, i.e. WDNRC and WDHTV Series
manufactured by COMPELMA [2]. The measured magnetic and electric
characteristics of these ferrites at 2.4 GHz are given in Table 1. The per-
meability and permittivity values have been measured using the cavity
perturbation method and integrated in the HFSS modelling to design
the antennas [3]. Shielding efficiency (SE) is the measure of the capacity
of a material to restrict microwaves from propagating through it. The SE
measurement setup consists of two S-band waveguide adapters connected
to different ports of a network analyser (Agilent 8714ET). Incident and
transmitted microwave power could be calculated from this. The
sample is kept in between the waveguide adapters which are tightly
screwed before measuring transmitted power. SE is defined as the ratio
of the power of the incident wave PI to that of the transmitted wave PT [4]:
SE ¼ 10 logðPI =PT ÞdB ð1Þ
Table 1: Magnetic and dielectric properties of WDNRC and
WDHTV
Dielectric at magnetic properties (at 2.4 GHz) WDNRC WDHTV
Permeability m0 6.2 0.8
Permittivity 10 220 98
Magnetic loss factor m00 8 6.5
Dielectric loss factor 100 16 8 in a 1989 anthropomorphic study [5]. The phantom shell is made from
WDHTV is shown to be 5 dB more shielding efficient when compared
to WDNRC (Fig. 1). It offers a shielding strength of about 30 dB at
2.4 GHz where WDNRC’s SE is almost 25 dB.
Description of miniaturised planar antenna: The IIFA (Fig. 2) is a
small planar inverted-F antenna with coplanar feeding. The IIFA is
first realised on FR4 substrate (e r¼ 4.4, tan d ¼ 0.02, h ¼ 1.6 mm)
and designed with HFSS in free space to resonate at 2.4 GHz. The
dimensions of the antenna are: s ¼ 2 mm, l ¼ 10.5 mm, d ¼ 3.5 mm.
As the ground plane of the antenna is located at the same level as the
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 4th February 2010 Vol. 46 No. 3
antenna, it has no shielding properties and must rather be seen as an
extension of the radiating element. When placed along the body, the
near-field energy is partially in human tissues which make the antenna
sensitive to its environment. As a result, a detuning of the resonant fre-
quency might be observed along with a degradation of the return loss.
Nevertheless, in SAR measurements presented in this Letter, antennas
will be located at 2 cm from the phantom surface. For this distance, vari-
ation in return loss performance can be neglected and the HFSS model-
ling of the body tissues is not required for a correct design. The
maximum gain is in the direction collinear to the feeding line and is
around 2 dBi at 2.4 GHz. The body influence on S11 is very small for
a 2 cm distance between the antenna and the body (phantom with a,
and without, a ferrite sheet. The frequency bandwidth (210 dB) is
800 MHz, the measured efficiency using the Wheeler cap method [3]
is 96%.
40
35
shielding efficiency, dB
30
25
20
15
10
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
frequency, GHz
Fig. 1 Shielding efficiencies of polymeric ferrite sheets
——— shielding efficiency of WDHTV
............ shielding efficiency of WDNRC
d
1
25 s
1
55
CPW line 43.5
0.25/2.5/0.25
20
Fig. 2 Integrated inverted-F antenna with dimensions (in mm)
Description of SAR measurement setup: Specific absorption rate can be
expressed in units of watts per kilogram (W/kg) by
sEi2
SAR ¼ ð2Þ
r
where Ei : rms value of the electric field strength in the tissue in V/m; s:
conductivity of body tissue in S/m; r: density of body tissue in kg/m3,
which means that the SAR can be reached from the measurement of the
electric field if the conductivity and density of body tissues are fully
characterised. The measurement setup comprises the phantom, the
E-field probe, and the antenna under test (AUT). The phantom model
is based on the size and the shape of the 90% large adult male reported
material with low loss and low permittivity material (tan (d) ¼ 0, 05,
1 ¼ 5). The thickness of the phantom is 3 mm with a tolerance of
0.2 mm. The dielectric properties of the liquid material required to fill
the phantom shell are given in Table 2. The liquid recipe is based on:
Propanol2 (40 ml), Butanol1 (30 ml), deionised water (75 ml). The
minimum detection limit is lower than 0.01 W/kg and the maximum
detection limit is higher than 100 W/kg. The linearity is within
+0.5 dB over the SAR range from 0.01 to 100 W/kg. The isotropy is
within +1 dB. The robot, holding the probe, scans the whole exposed
volume of the phantom to evaluate the three-dimensional field
distribution.
Table 2: Dielectric properties of liquid phantom shows higher dispersion (Fig. 3b) compared to the IIFA without any
kind of backing. 10 gm average SAR values are reduced from 7.23 to
Frequency (MHz) 1r s (S/m) Frequency range (MHz)
0.99 W/kg and the peak 1 gm reduces from 13.12 to 1.90 W/kg.
2450 39 1.80 2200–2700
3000 39 2.40 2700–3000 IIFA with WDHTV: The same phenomenal difference between
WDNRC and WDHTV as in their shielding efficiencies (SE) can be
Results: SAR measurements of miniaturised antennas with and without observed in SAR (Fig. 3c) too. SAR values are lower for WDHTV
ferrite shielding: SAR measurements were performed for the IIFA at than that of the IIFA with WDNRC. 10gCube ¼ 0.79, 1gCube ¼ 1.44
the operating frequency of 2.4 GHz. A high transmitting power WDHTV is slightly more efficient in countering electromagnetic inter-
250 mW is used to provide good resolution. The following configur- ference (EMI) problems. For actual application the power used is only
ations are considered (for each configuration, the distance from the 1 mW and so SAR will be much lower than these values.
phantom surface to the antenna is 20 mm): the IIFA without ferrite
shielding (Fig. 3a); the IIFA with a piece (10  10 cm2) of WDNRC Conclusion: A low profile, conformal antenna has been designed to res-
ferrite sheet on the phantom (Fig. 3b); the IIFA with a piece (10  onate at 2.4 GHz. Specific absorption rate is reduced by polymeric
10 cm2) of WDHTV ferrite sheet on the phantom (Fig. 3c). ferrite sheets which are particularly attractive as they are low profile,
flexible and conformal. So the antenna could be thought of to be
7
printed on them to attain certain flexibility in its use. Polymeric ferrite
IIFA-2cm phantom
6
IIFA-2cm WDNRC/phantom 0.9 sheets will be best suited for RFID (868 MHz) application where anten-
0.8
nas are made of metallic ink and deposited on a plastic sheet. The
5 0.7
characteristics of ferrite will lead to the miniaturisation of antennas.
0.6
4
0.5

3 0.4
Acknowledgments: The characterisations were conducted in BREST
0.3
(with the help of P. Queffelec, Université de Brest, Responsable Pôle
2
0.2
Micro-Ondes et Matériaux, Lab-STICC UMR 3192.
SAR_10g=7.23 W/kg/W SAR_1g=13.12 W/kg/W 1 SAR_10g=0.99 W/kg/W SAR_1g=1.90 W/kg/W 0.1

a b
W/kg/W
W/kg/W
IIFA-2cm WDHTV/phantom
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
SAR_10g=0.79 W/kg/W SAR_1g=1.44 W/kg/W
c 0
W/kg/W
Fig. 3 SAR distribution
a 10 gm SAR distribution of IIFA without ferrite shielding
b 10 gm SAR distribution of IIFA with piece of WDNRC ferrite sheet on phantom
c 10 gm SAR distribution of IIFA with piece of WDHTV ferrite sheet on phantom
IIFA without ferrite on phantom: The SAR values are high. The
average 10 gm SAR is 7.23 W/kg whereas the peak 1gm SAR is
found to be 13.12 W/kg. The 10 gm SAR distribution of the IIFA situ-
ated 20 mm away from the phantom is shown in Fig. 3a. As seen in the
pictogram the absorbed energy is highly concentrated for the IIFA and it
in turn produces higher SAR than when the energy is dispersed.
IIFA with WDNRC: The small radiating element of the IIFA is
entirely covered by the backing WDNRC sheet. This acts as an indirect
control over the near field of the antenna. Now the near field is concen-
trated above the surface of antenna. The back radiation is reduced to a
minimum and it could be seen clearly from the SAR results. SAR
0
# The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2010
19 November 2009
doi: 10.1049/el.2010.3246
One or more of the Figures in this Letter are available in colour online.
R. Augustine, T. Alves, B. Poussot and J.-M. Laheurte (Laboratoire
ESYCOM, Université Paris Est, Marne-La-Vallée, Bâtiment Copernic
5 Bd Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne, Marne La Vallée 77454, France)
E-mail: augustin@univ-mlv.fr
T. Sarrebourse (Orange, France Telecom, Issy-les-Moulineaux)
K.T. Mathew (Microwave Tomography and Materials Research
Laboratory, Department of Electronics, Cochin University of Science
and Technology, Cochin-22, India)
References
1 Alves, T., Augustine, R., Grzeskowiak, M., Poussot, B., Delcroix, D.,
Protat, S., Laheurte, J.-M., and Quéffélec, P.: ‘BAN antenna design
using ferrite polymer composite’. EUCAP, March 2009, Berlin,
Germany, p. 268
2 www.compelma.com/actualites.html
3 Alves, T., Augustine, R., Quéffélec, P., Grzeskowiak, M., Poussot, B.,
and Laheurte, J.-M.: ‘Polymeric ferrite-loaded antennas for on-body
communications’, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 2009, 51, (11),
pp. 2530–2533
4 Lee, C.Y., et al.: ‘Electromagnetic interference shielding by using
conductive polypyrrole and metal compound coated on fabrics’, Polym.
Adv. Technol., 2002, 13, pp. 577– 583
5 Gordon, C.C., et al.: (1988 Anthropometric Survey of U.S. Army
Personnel: Methods and Summary Statistics, Technical Report
NATICK/TR-89/044, 1989)

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