Stitched Ground Planes for Textile Antenna Application: An Experimental Study

This paper presents an application of stitched ground plane for microstrip patch antenna design. In this work Matlab interface to computer embroidery techniques were used to implement the felt and denim substrates on microstrip patch antenna. These antennas were simulated using a commercial full 3D electromagnetic CST Microwave Studio 2019. A method to optimize the stitch patterns with conductive thread for antenna ground plane for 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band and 5 GHz wearable wireless local area networks (WLAN) frequencies was achieved. Rigid and flexible wearable antennas (microstrip patch antennas) were fabricated using the stitched ground plane. The electrical resistance was reduced between the meshes during the stitching design process. Results in terms of bandwidth, radiation patterns and reflection coefficients (S11) are presented.

Miniaturized Novel UWB Band-Notch Textile Antenna for Body Area Networks

This paper presents the design and analysis of a miniaturized and novel wearable ultra-wideband(UWB)band-notch textile antenna for Body Area Networks(BANs).The major goal of building the antenna for wearable applications with band notch in X-band is to reject the downlink band(7.25 to 7.75 GHz)of satellite communication in the UWB frequency ranges of 3.1–10.6 GHz to keep away from interference.Computer Simulation Technology(CST)TM Microwave Studio,which is user-friendly and reliable,was used to model and simulate the antenna.The radiating element of the antenna is designed on Jeans’textile substrate,which has a relative permittivity of 1.7.The thickness of the jeans’fabric substrate has been considered to be 1 mm.Return loss,gain,bandwidth,impedance,radiation,and total efficiency,and radiation patterns are presented and investigated.The antenna is simulated placed on the three layers of the human body model,and the on-body results are summarized in comparison with free space.Results and analysis indicate that this antenna has good band-notch characteristics in the frequency range of 7.25 GHz to 7.75 GHz.The parametric study varying the relative permittivity of Jeans’fabric substrate of this antenna is also evaluated.In addition,effects on the antenna parameters of variation of ground plane size have been reported.The antenna is 25 mm×16 mm×1.07 mm in total volume.Results reveal that this antenna achieves the design goal and performs well both in free space and on the body.

Higher Order OAM Mode Generation Using Wearable Antenna for 5G NR Bands

This paper presents a flexible and wearable textile array antenna designed to generate Orbital Angular Momentum(OAM)waves with Mode+2 at 3.5 GHz(3.4 to 3.6 GHz)of the sub-6 GHz fifth-generation(5G)New Radio(NR)band.The proposed antenna is based on a uniform circular array of eight microstrip patch antennas on a felt textile substrate.In contrast to previous works involving the use of rigid substrates to generate OAM waves,this work explored the use of flexible substrates to generate OAM waves for the first time.Other than that,the proposed antenna was simulated,analyzed,fabricated,and tested to confirm the generation of OAMMode+2.With the same design,OAM Mode−2 can be generated readily simply by mirror imaging the feed network.Note that the proposed antenna operated at the desired frequency of 3.5 GHz with an overall bandwidth of 400 MHz in free space.Moreover,mode purity analysis is carried out to verify the generation of OAM Mode+2,and the purity obtained was 41.78%at free space flat condition.Furthermore,the effect of antenna bending on the purity of the generated OAM mode is also investigated.Lastly,the influence of textile properties on OAM modes is examined to assist future researchers in choosing suitable fabrics to design flexible OAM-based antennas.After a comprehensive analysis considering different factors related to wearable applications,this paper demonstrates the feasibility of generating OAMwaves using textile antennas.Furthermore,as per the obtained Specific Absorption Rate(SAR),it is found that the proposed antenna is safe to be deployed.The findings of this work have a significant implication for body-centric communications.

A Wideband Circularly Polarized Jeans-Based Antenna at 2.45 GHz

Development of textile antennas is an important segment towards the goal of creating smart clothing. In this paper, we report on a jeans-based circularly polarized textile antenna designed for the E-band (around 2.45 GHz). We present three variations of the design and the respective results. The antenna comprises a multi-layer jeans-fabric as the substrate, a conductive fabric as the patch, which is concealed with another layer of jeans, and the ground plane is formed by either a cooper foil or another conductive fabric. A multi-layer structure was chosen to provide a wider bandwidth and better efficiency, whereas the upper surface of the antenna was covered by one more layer of jeans to both make the antenna less conspicuous, when worn on the arm, and protect the patch and substrate from mechanical damages and moisture. All three variants are characterized by a good realized gain of about 3 dB, a wide beam width and a wide bandwidth of 21% or better, around 2.45 GHz, having the radiation efficiency around 36%, and front-to-back ratio of 5 dB or better, with the ground plane being just slightly larger than the patch.