Wearable 2.4GHz Antenna on Textile Substrate

Abstract

This paper presents a practical approach and a simple method for the design of a wearable textile substrate antenna especially made for clothing. The design presented focuses on obtaining a usable antenna for the common 2.4GHz band that can be easily made manually or using standard machinery using conductive textile materials and threads, embedded into normal clothing. Experiments are focused on working with UHF band antennas constructed using standard conductive textile fabric, thus demonstrating that good performance can be obtained for household, industrial, telecommunication and medical domains. Several techniques can be used to create an embedded flexible antenna onto textile materials, and performance of the presented wearable antenna is evaluated in a controlled environment and on human-body setups.