Electronic Textile Platforms for Monitoring in a Natural Environment

Abstract

Electronics textile platforms are conceived as the implementation into textile of added functions like sensing, actuation, computing and power managing with the whole being part of an interactive communication network. Systems based on such platforms combine the knowledge of advances in fields such as fiber and polymer research, material processing, microelectronics, signals processing, nanotechnologies and telecommunication. Textile is the common platform where smart materials in form of fibers are integrated, where the properties of the material can be tuned through the combination of chemical surfaces processes and the implementation of multi-laminated and differentiated structures, where the exploitation of textile manufacturing potentiality allows the use of redundant sensors configurations and the combination of mechanical and electrochemical properties to create new multifunctional patterns. This paper presents several platforms developed in the last ten years in the frame of research projects targeting different applications, from health care and rehabilitation to security purposes; a special emphasis will be given to the description of technical and functional solutions implemented to satisfy functional and comfort requirements.