Textile Antenna –Structure, Material and Applications

Abstract

Nowadays, wearable antennas are gaining more attention due to their different characteristics like light weight, small size, low profile, flexibility, robustness, etc. in which a wearable antenna substrate is used as a textile material. Due to textile antennas, clothes are used in the communication system. Textile antennas have different advantages like being thin, less weight, low maintenance, low-cost, and simply included with RF circuits, so they are responsible for good results. Selecting a substrate is dependent upon the permittivity and loss tangent of that particular substrate. Textile antennas have a variety of applications, including health monitoring, skin cancer detection, various sports activities, heart rate monitoring, temperature monitoring, and so on. In this paper, different textile antennas are discussed according to structure, substrate, applications, and simulation software. There are different fabrics that are used as substrates, like cotton, polyester, jeans, leather, lycra, etc. Some fabrics are used for conducting patches also. There are different fabrication methods available for textile antennas.