Samsung Patents a Wearable That Turns Its Own Body Into a Radio Signal Transmitter

By Patentlyze Team · Updated Jul 21, 2026

Samsung is exploring a way to skip the dedicated antenna component inside a wearable device entirely, turning the circuit board itself into the radio signal sender and receiver.

How Samsung's smartwatch could ditch a separate antenna

Inside almost every smartwatch or fitness tracker is a tiny antenna, a separate physical piece dedicated to sending and receiving wireless signals. It takes up space, adds complexity, and has to be carefully positioned so it doesn't interfere with other components.

Samsung's patent describes a different approach: instead of a dedicated antenna, the circuit board inside the wearable handles that job itself. A small gap cut into the board separates two sections. One section holds the main electronics; the other acts as the radiating element, essentially becoming the antenna when the wireless circuitry feeds a signal across that gap.

Think of it like turning a piece of your phone's skeleton into a loudspeaker instead of bolting a separate speaker to it. The result could be a device with fewer parts, a thinner profile, or more room for a bigger battery.

How the circuit board gap creates an antenna signal path

The patent describes a wearable device built around a substrate (the flat circuit board that everything sits on) divided into three zones:

• First part: where the wireless communication circuitry lives
• Second part: a separate section of the board that includes a feeding point, the spot where electrical signal is injected to drive radio transmission
• Fill cut area: a physical gap or slot cut between the two parts, which shapes how the electrical signal travels and radiates outward

The wireless circuitry sends a signal through that gap to the feeding point on the second part of the board. That second part then acts as the antenna, radiating the signal to communicate with external devices like a smartphone.

This technique, sometimes called a substrate-integrated antenna, is not entirely new to radio engineering, but applying it specifically to shrink wearable hardware is the focus here. The fill cut area is the key design detail: its geometry controls the antenna's frequency behavior, meaning Samsung's engineers can tune it for specific wireless bands (like Bluetooth or NFC) by adjusting the shape of that gap.

What this means for thinner, cheaper wearables

Every cubic millimeter matters in a device you wear on your wrist. If Samsung can eliminate or reduce a dedicated antenna component, that space can go toward a larger battery, thinner housing, or additional sensors. It could also lower manufacturing costs by reducing the number of discrete parts that need to be installed and tested.

For you as a consumer, the practical payoff would likely show up as a thinner smartwatch, longer battery life, or both, without any change to the wireless features you already use. This is the kind of quiet internal engineering that rarely gets announced on a spec sheet but often drives the generational improvements people actually notice when they upgrade.

Editorial commentary on a publicly published patent application. Not legal advice.