Abstract
This paper presents two compact textile-based planar dipole and loop antennas for wearable communication applications operating in the 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical radio (ISM) bands. The antennas were fabricated on a 0.44 mm thin camouflaged-military print, cotton jean cloth using conductive copper threads, and sewing embroidery technique to create the radiating structure. Design and performance analyses of the antennas were carried out using simulations; further experiments were performed in anechoic chamber and indoor environment to validate the designs. The experiments were carried out in a free space scenario and on the various locations of the human subject such as the torso and limb joints. The performance of the antennas was investigated based on the reflection coefficient in normal and bent conditions corresponding to the different radii of the locations of the human limbs. The antennas perform well in free space and on-body scenarios in flat and bend conditions providing return loss below −10 dB in all cases with an acceptable resonant frequency close to 2.4 GHz due to the antenna bending and body effects. The radiation pattern measurements are also reported in this work for free space and on-body scenarios. It is observed that the presence of the human body significantly influences the antenna radiation pattern which leads to an increase in the front-to-back ratio and also makes the antenna more directive. Overall, the performance of the fabricated embroidered textile antennas was found suitable for various wearable body-centric applications in indoor environments.
Highlights
Wearable communication technologies offer promising solutions for applications in the field of biomedical, consumer electronics, sports, military, and smart home applications
Research is being carried out at various frequency bands available in the open literature for wireless body area network (WBAN) applications ranging from 2.4/5.8 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band [4], 3.1–10.6 GHz ultra-wideband (UWB) [5,6,7], and the millimetere wave band 57–64 GHz [8, 9]. e 2.4 GHz ISM band is very suitable for wearable body-centric communication due to the global availability of the spectrum and wide range of applications in the field of healthcare, smart homes, sports, military, and day-to-day life [2, 3]
Wearable antennas should be very compact, low-profile, lightweight, mechanically robust, efficient, and preferably flexible to suit the conformal structure of the body surface [2,3,4,5]. ese antennas should perform well when placed in proximity of the human body and have suitable performance in terms of operating
Summary
Wearable communication technologies offer promising solutions for applications in the field of biomedical, consumer electronics, sports, military, and smart home applications. E proposed design exploits the lightweight and flexible properties of the cotton cloth along with the high conductivity copper threads which are embroidered using sewing technology to form the radiating elements over the textile. E deviations observed in the simulated and measured results can be possibly attributed to the radiating material in these textile antennas being conductive threads in comparison to a uniform sheet of copper in the simulated design, as well as to a difference in the permittivity of the substrate employed in the simulations from that of the jeans cloth substrate in these antennas. Similar radiation patterns are observed for both cases, validating the performance of the fabricated antenna
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