Designs of Textile Antenna Arrays for Smart Clothing Applications

Abstract In this work, three designs of textile antennas, namely, a rectangular microstrip patch antenna, annular slot antenna, and planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA), operating in the 2.45 GHz WLAN band were developed for smart clothing applications. Conductive textile, a copper-plated polyester fabric, was used for fabricating antenna radiators and grounds. An insulating neoprene fabric with a thickness of 4 mm and a permittivity of 1.5 was used for preparing the substrates. The textile patch antenna achieved a maximum gain of 5.96 dBi and a bandwidth of 4.6%. The annual slot antenna showed a moderate gain and bandwidth of 2.9 dBi and 13.1%, respectively. The PIFA achieved the widest bandwidth of 31% but the smallest gain of 1.2 dBi. Furthermore, the performance deterioration of the proposed antennas under various bending conditions was analyzed to evaluate their suitability for wearable applications. Moreover, two 2 × 2 patch and slot antenna arrays were assembled to increase gain and bandwidth. The measured results proved that the developed antenna designs provide superior performance.

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Wearable Textile Patch Antenna for Medical Applications

International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering - Special Issue ◽

10.35940/ijitee.b1011.1292s319 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (2S3) ◽

pp. 44-47

Keyword(s):

Dielectric Constant ◽

Patch Antenna ◽

Return Loss ◽

Polyester Fabric ◽

Slot Antenna ◽

Wearable Antennas ◽

Rectangular Patch ◽

Denim Fabric ◽

Conductive Textile ◽

Rectangular Microstrip Antenna

In recent years of electronics industrialization, antennas are more popular components; wearable antennas play an important role due to their properties such as wireless communication and miniaturization. The design of wearable antennas have distinction in the area of antenna design and development, in this paper a thorough study had been carried out wearable antennas blended with textile, which has significant dielectric constant. This work describes the design a textile antenna, namely, a rectangular microstrip patch antenna and then rectangular with U-slot antenna with slits. After designing two kinds of antennas, a comparison will be made between their results. Conductive textile, a copper-plated polyester fabric, will be used for fabricating antenna radiators and grounds. An insulating denim fabric with dielectric constant 1.7 with a thickness of 0.7 is used for preparing the substrates. The proposed antenna is designed and all the results will calculated using Ansoft HFSS Software. After evaluating the results of a rectangular microstrip antenna and U-slot Antenna on textile substrate, the rectangular patch resonate at 2.5 GHz with the return loss of -16.86dB and the U-slot Antenna resonated at 2.2 GHz with return loss of -41.68dB and 3.9 GHz return loss of -16.16dB.

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