Abstract
A novel high-gain textile antenna array system, fully integrated into a rescue-worker’s vest and operating in the Industrial, Scientific, and Medical wireless band (2.4–2.4835 GHz), is presented. The system comprises an array consisting of four tip-truncated equilateral triangular microstrip patch antennas (ETMPAs), a power divider, line stretchers, and coaxial cables. The array is vertically positioned on the human torso to produce a narrow beam in elevation, as such reducing fading and allowing to steer the maximum gain in a small angular sector centered around the broadside direction. To allow simple low-cost beam steering, we specifically minimize mutual coupling by using a relative large distance between the patches and by selecting the ETMPA element as the most suited topology from three potential patch geometries. Moreover, we investigate the stability of return loss and mutual coupling characteristics under different relative humidity conditions, when bending the array, when placing the system on-body, and when covering it by different textile layers. Reflection coefficient and gain patterns are simulated and measured for the antenna system in free space and placed on the human body.
Highlights
Garments present a large platform for deploying smart textile systems combining textiles, electronics, and antennas
The system comprises an array consisting of four tiptruncated equilateral triangular microstrip patch antennas (ETMPAs), a power divider, line stretchers, and coaxial cables
In order to obtain the optimal performance from the chosen antenna array topology, we carefully investigated three antenna element topologies: tip-truncated ETMPA, square ring patch, and rhomboidal ring patch
Summary
Garments present a large platform for deploying smart textile systems combining textiles, electronics, and antennas. In [13], a twoelement microstrip parallel array on a 3D orthogonal woven composite is studied, operating at 1.5 GHz with a gain equal to 6.4 dBi. In [11,12,13], the mutual coupling between the adjacent elements of the array is not studied, whereas in this paper, we present the design and characterization of a 4-port textile antenna array system, able to operate in a wireless body and personal area network, in the 2.45 GHz ISM band. The presented textile array is able to provide more reliable wireless off-body links, thanks to its array gain and its steerable narrow main beam This is realized by deploying the array vertically on the human torso, allowing to steer.
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