A 3D directive microwave antenna for biomedical imaging application

A directive three dimensional antenna, using folded radiating structure has been presented for the application of microwave imaging in clinical diagnosis. Two reflector walls have been introduced to achieve higher gain and directive radiation pattern along with the folding technique. The shorting wall technique is utilized to reduce the overall antenna size and to get resonance at a lower frequency. The proposed antenna obtained operating band at 1.67 GHz to 1.74 GHz. The dimension of the 3D radiating structure is 40£25£10.5 mm3. The antenna has an average realized gain of 5.2 dBi. Owing to the unidirectional radiation pattern, high gain and operating bandwidth within lower microwave frequency, the proposed antenna has potential to be used in microwave imaging for biomedical diagnosis. Also, the antenna has been utilized to compute an imaging phenomenon to detect abnormality in human head and result is presented. The design and simulation process are performed in the CST Microwave Studio software. The antenna is fabricated from 0.2 mm thick copper sheets. The results of the fabricated antenna are measured using PNA Network Analyzer (N5227A) and Satimo Star Lab.