Compact and flexible meander antenna for Surface Acoustic Wave sensors

This paper presents an innovative, flexible and biocompatible Ultra High Frequency meander antenna, operating at about 800 MHz, realized by means of sputtering on a Polyethylene Naphthalate substrate, and by means of a multi-material 3D printer. The fabricated antennas were characterized in terms of scattering parameters, showing a good impedance matching and a bandwidth in the order of tens of megahertz, gain and 3D radiation patterns. A numerical model was also introduced to investigate the limits of the proposed technologies in terms of metal thicknesses. The fabricated antenna could be efficiently integrated with Surface Acoustic Wave resonators to realize compact, wireless, wearable and battery-less sensing platforms.