The wearable textile-based microstrip patch antenna preliminary design and development

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary development of a wearable textile microstrip patch antenna operating for wireless body area network (WBAN) at the center frequency, fc of 2.40 GHz. Textile materials are suitable to be designed as wearable antenna substrates due to their low dielectric constant or relative permittivity characteristics. Precisely, in this project, jeans fabric or denim with the relative permittivity, εr = 1.70 and thickness of 1.00 mm is chosen as a substrate attached to SheildIt Super as a conductive material with the thickness of 0.17 mm and conductivity of 6.67 × 105 S/m, respectively. In the first stage, a microstrip patch antenna layout with an edge feeding technique is designed and simulated by using Keysight Advanced Design System (ADS) software. In the second stage, a wearable textile microstrip patch antenna is fabricated, integrated, and hidden inside clothing, properly. Simulation and fabrication measurement results show that the designed antenna characteristics are suitable for an industrial, scientific, and medical radio (ISM) band, which is at the fc = 2.40 GHz. Moreover, relative permittivity, εr and thickness, h of the developed textile-based substrate affect significantly a wearable microstrip patch antenna radiation performance.