Textile dipole antenna for wearable application

Abstract

The idea of wearable electronic system has triggered a vast research on the capability of imple-menting the system on daily garment. As a wearable system, the human body friction should be taken into account. Antenna is one of the main structure in wearable communication system. This paper presents a study on a textile dipole antenna with two different conducting materials. The conducting materials are Shieldit fabric and copper fabric while the substrate is denim. The denim has a dielectric constant of 1.67 with 0.85 mm thickness and loss tangent of 0.019. The antenna resonates at Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) band which is at 2.45 GHz. Antenna perfor-mances are observed in terms of reflection coefficient, bandwidth, and radiation pattern. Three different investigations are analysed: antenna measurement with two different bending sizes, under wet conditions and on-body conditions. The bending and wetness effect of the textile antenna are also investigated. No significant changes to the antenna performance under the bending condi-tion. The antenna cannot operate in wet condition at desired frequency. In addition, on-body measurement is done to investigate the antenna properties in wearable system. A suitable place-ment of the antenna on the human body has been discovered between the front and back of the body and the arm.