Emissive performance of wearable RF textiles made from multi-material fibers

Abstract

In this work, we present the emissive performance of wearable radio-frequency (RF) textiles made from multi-material fibers, for both on-body and off-body scenarios, for body area network applications through ISM (2.4 GHz) bands. It is shown that the emissive performance of the RF textiles in terms of return loss (S11), radiation pattern, and efficiency (gain) were similar to commercial router antennas, while the center frequency shift and band broadening were reduced due in part to the small form factor of the fiber antennas. The RF textiles were fabricated by integrating unobtrusive polymer-glass-metal fiber composites into a textile host using conventional weaving process. This approach provided good RF emissive performance in compliance with safety regulations while preserving the mechanical and cosmetic properties of the garments.