Developing and study of wearable and flexible antennas for Body Area Networks working under extreme conditions

Abstract

The emergence of wearable intelligent textile systems with sensors and actuators nodes are integrated into user clothes. Emergency units can benefit from new technologies to improve their performance and security conditions when working exposed to risk situations. In firefighters case is a the system Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) at 2.4GHz with a watch to show the thermal stress and, in case of exceed healthy level will trigger an alarm to warn the user. In this scenario the design and study of the working conditions of an antenna is a crucial issue for ensuring the communication capabilities of the the whole system.In this work paper we present the design, development and test of a miniature flexible antenna prepared to integrate in the uniforms maintaining the radiation properties although bend or warming.We will see how to minimize the size of the antenna with a antenna PIFA on a Polyethylene Terephtalate (PET) substrate.index Terms -Communications,firefighter, textile antenna, wearable antenna system, wireless communication, ISM, Bluetooth low energy.

Intra-building People Localisation Using Personal Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Devices

“…In the following paragraphs the utilisation of BLE technology for the purposes of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) aiming at safety of emergency units will be discussed. The work of Rius et al [18] mainly scopes towards modifying the original design of antenna that is used for WBAN in order to increase the initial frequency and create smaller, more flexible and comfortable solution.…”

“…The provided examples are aimed at integrating sensors and network nodes into clothes of members of staff of an emergency unit, for instance, clothes of a firefighter, where sensors are interconnected with a smart device (in the case of the research -a watch) via BLE. The system can monitor thermal stress level, exceeding of which will cause the alarm triggering and user being notified [18]. The authors provided information about four practical experiments: body issues, flexibility, textile and thermal stress tests.…”

“…The authors provided information about four practical experiments: body issues, flexibility, textile and thermal stress tests. This type of system can be utilized in extreme conditions and has to be reliable, as in some cases emergency team members' lives may depend on it [18].…”

Low specific absorption rate and gain‐enhanced meandered bowtie antenna utilizing flexible dipole‐like artificial magnetic conductor for medical application at 2.4 GHz

“…This fact raised public concern on possible adverse health effect 5 and therefore, the interaction between the EM wave and human body should be taken into consideration while designing an antenna especially for mobile devices. Some studies focus on the impact of human body on antenna performance [6][7][8] and specific absorption rate (SAR) at operating frequency covering GSM 1800 band, industrial scientific and medical (ISM) band, and also 4G LTE band. [9][10][11] These studies show that the presence of human body in the vicinity of radiation source may results in tissue heating due to the power absorbed by the body.…”