Reconfigurable wearable antenna for 5G applications using nematic liquid crystals

Abstract The antenna is one of the key building blocks of many wearable electronic devices, and its functions include wireless communications, energy harvesting, and radiative wireless power transfer. In an effort to realize lightweight, autonomous, and battery‐less wearable devices, we demonstrate a reconfigurable antenna design for 5G wearable applications that requires ultra‐low driving voltages (0.4–0.6 V) and operates over a high frequency range (3.3–3.8 GHz). For smart glasses applications, previous antenna designs were ‘fixed’ and mounted on the eyeglass frame itself. Here, we demonstrate a reconfigurable design that could be achieved on the lens itself using an anisotropic liquid crystal (LC) material. We demonstrate how liquid crystal alignment and electric field patterns strongly influence the tuning capabilities of these antennas in the gigahertz range and present a smart, reconfigurable spiral antenna system with a liquid crystal substrate.