3-D Etching Techniques for Low-Cost Wearable Microwave Devices in Grounded Coplanar Waveguide

This work presents a new, 3-D-printed design for grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW), employing a low-cost, flexible substrate for wearable microwave applications. First, a resonant technique is used to derive the electromagnetic characteristics of the selected material, Flexible 80A, which is highly flexible but lossy. Next, to use this material as the GCPW substrate, novel fabrication techniques are analyzed to minimize the losses, based on customized removals of the material from the aperture regions, to reduce dispersion and minimize propagation loss. The first results show that the proposed techniques outperform both traditional microstrip and GCPW technologies and promise to be an excellent solution for the 3-D printing of low-cost flexible/wearable tags/sensors that can be activated wirelessly.