Flexible textile antennas for body-worn communication

Abstract

This paper presents an embroidered body-worn antenna using conductive fibers (E-fibers). The antenna's conductive surfaces were fabricated using precise and automated embroidering techniques to produce fully flexible and conformal antenna elements attached to regular fabrics and clothing. These E-fiber antennas offer desirable mechanical properties without undermining electrical performance for body-worn, on-clothing applications at radio frequencies (RF). In this study, we used an embroidered asymmetric meandered flare (AMF) dipole antenna to validate the textile antenna's performance. Its excellent RF performance was found comparable to conventional printed antennas. Therefore, these new E-fiber antennas may be integrated into scarves, handbags, shirts, coats or hand bands for convenient carefree health monitoring and wideband communications.