Abstract
In this paper, a switchable textile communication system working at 2.45 GHz ISM band is presented and studied for different locations within a realistic on-body environment. A 3D laser scanner is used to generate a numerical phantom of the measured subject to improve the accuracy of the simulations which are carried out for different body postures. For the off-body communications, the system is acting as an aperture coupled microstrip patch antenna with a boresight gain of 1.48 dBi. On-body communication is achieved by using a textile stripline, which gives approximately 5 dB transmission loss over 600 mm distance. The system is switched between on and off-body modes by PIN diodes. Common issues, such as shape distortion and body detuning effects which the textile antenna may experience in realistic use are fully discussed. Robust antenna performance is noted in the on-body tests, and an additional 3 dB transmission coefficient deduction was noticed in the most severe shape distortion case.
Highlights
The textile antenna has attracted much attention as wearable electronics and smart clothes are becoming a popular topic in industry and academia
When the PIN1 is on and PIN2 is off, the antenna system is working in off-body mode, where we can see the strong surface current concentrated on the patch component (Figure 4b)
The communication system turns to the off-body mode when the PIN1 is on and PIN2 is off, where the system is acting as a patch antenna and communicating singles with the nodes far away from human body
Summary
The textile antenna has attracted much attention as wearable electronics and smart clothes are becoming a popular topic in industry and academia. In [17], antennas were designed and compared for over body surface communication at 2.45 GHz, and the path loss is generally greater than 36 dB over a distance of 257 mm in NLOS cases. It will be a very attractive idea if these two communication scenarios can be integrated into one system, but only a small number of papers have studied such a switchable antenna or communication system which can support both on- and off-body communications [18,19,20,21].
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