Ultra-Miniaturized Camera Integrated Antenna for Wireless Capsule Endoscopy

Abstract

The wireless capsule endoscopy requires a high-resolution camera and compact wideband antenna systems that yield high performance at low manufacturing cost and allow easy integration of components into a capsule. Therefore, a novel ultra-miniaturized wideband meandered antenna along an annular ring substrate is proposed that enables straightforward integration between the camera and capsule wall. The antenna contains two rings of microstrip lines on two dielectric layers. By exciting microstrip lines and judiciously positioning their resonance frequencies, all the medical device radio communications service (MedRadio) in the [401-457] MHz bands are covered. Numerical results exhibit an overlapping impedance bandwidth of 57.8%, from 364 MHz to 615 MHz, and stable radiation performance across the operating bandwidth with a minimum realized gain of -42 dBi, and efficiency of 0.02% for different body tissues. Hence, this innovative design paves the way for a new generation of cost-effective, high-performance, and directly integrated antenna systems that efficiently exploit the area in the capsule.