Embroidery and Related Manufacturing Techniques for Wearable Antennas: Challenges and Opportunities

Tsolis, Aris; Whittow, William G.; Alexandridis, Antonis A.; Vardaxoglou, J.C.

doi:10.3390/electronics3020314

Cited by 195 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…However, the values of the permittivity are higher compared with garments [8]. This is easily understandable considering that cast acrylic is plastic and denser than woven, knitted etc.…”

Section: Phantom Materials Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…As can be seen from Table II cast acrylic (shell) is a low loss material and this property could characterize it as a good candidate to approximate garments [8], as long as the wearable antennas are generally mounted onto garments. However, the values of the permittivity are higher compared with garments [8].…”

Section: Phantom Materials Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Test and evaluation of antennas or electronic systems mounted on a person can be a really challenging procedure [8]. Due to ethics, safety and repeatability issues it is not appropriate to use a real person inside an anechoic chamber for wearable antennas performance evaluation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Design, realisation and evaluation of a liquid hollow torso phantom appropriate for wearable antenna assessment

Tsolis

Paraskevopoulos

Alexandridis

et al. 2017

IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation

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This study examines the design, realisation and evaluation of a lightweight and low cost hollow oval cross‐section torso phantom appropriate for wearable antenna performance assessment. The phantom consists of an empty inner space (hollow) surrounded by a shell with double plastic walls between which there is a tissue simulating liquid. The phantom's plastic shell is made of a low loss cast acrylic and the liquid is a commercially available one with properties calibrated for the frequency range of 2–6 GHz. The proposed phantom is compared, through simulations, with a full liquid torso phantom and a heterogeneous anthropomorphic voxel phantom. In addition, the fabricated phantom is compared with human bodies and a homogeneous anthropomorphic solid phantom, through measurements. The phantom performance is tested in terms of electric field distribution of a wearable antenna on its surface and the path loss between two wearable antennas, on either side of the phantom. It is proved that the hollow phantom performance approximates the full liquid phantom when an RF absorbing material is placed in the central hollow region. The phantom performance in terms of S11 wearable antenna measurements is evaluated and found in good agreement with real human bodies in the examined frequency range (2–6 GHz). The far‐field wearable antenna performance of the proposed phantom shows deviation in gain <1.5 dB, compared with anthropomorphic phantom.

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“…However, the values of the permittivity are higher compared with garments [8]. This is easily understandable considering that cast acrylic is plastic and denser than woven, knitted etc.…”

Section: Phantom Materials Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Phantom Materials Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Design, realisation and evaluation of a liquid hollow torso phantom appropriate for wearable antenna assessment

Tsolis

Paraskevopoulos

Alexandridis

et al. 2017

IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation

Self Cite

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“…This fact is due to the availability of the manufacturing technology (industrial embroidery machines), efficient exploitation of the expensive specialized silver threads and repeatability of geometries and layouts [1]. These wearable antennas are suitable for application fields such as health monitoring, physical training, emergency rescue service and law-enforcement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wearable embroidered GPS textile antenna

Gil

Fernández‐García

2017

2017 Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium - Spring (PIERS)

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“…Later, in 2008, it was found that a better connection and more flexibility can be obtained by making use of a thermally-activated thermal sheet [13], [45] to assemble the different layers. Quite recently, embroidered patch antennas [46] gained in popularity, thanks to the availability of low-cost automatic embroidery machines that operate with conductive yarns, These machines enable the study of different embroidery patterns for antenna and ground plane, which is very useful in the context of RFID tags [47]. Finally, additive techniques may be applied, such as screen or inkjet printing, to define antenna, reflector and ground-plane patterns on the garment [32], [49]- [51].…”

Section: B Materials and Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wearable Antennas for Off-Body Radio Links at VHF and UHF Bands: Challenges, the state of the art, and future trends below 1 GHz

Nepa

Rogier

2015

IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag.

106

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Abstract-An in-depth survey of wearable antennas for offbody radio links in the VHF and UHF frequency bands (below 1 GHz) is presented. The review encompasses distinctive specifications, design criteria and challenges, material characterization procedures, antenna topologies and technologies, multi-antenna systems, dedicated testing procedures, applications and future trends.Index Terms-Wearable antennas, body-worn antennas, textile antennas, embroidered antennas, VHF antennas, UHF antennas, antennas for body-centric communications, antennas for body area networks, antennas for personal area networks, antennas for off-body wireless communications. I. INTRODUCTIONhere are several existing and forthcoming wireless applications that either require or can benefit from one or more antennas that are directly stitched on a piece of clothing or a garment, or integrated into a personal accessory (such as shoes, glasses, buttons, helmets). These antennas are usually referred to as body-worn antennas, textile antennas, BAN (Body Area Network) antennas, antennas for body-centric communications, wearable antennas. The last term is the one that is going to be used in this paper, as it denotes any antenna that is small and light enough to be worn or carried on one's body.In the last decades, hundreds of scientific papers on wearable antennas have been published in the open literature [1]- [8]. Therefore, for the sake of completeness and clarity, a valuable analysis of the state-of-the-art on wearable antennas should be limited to antennas for a specific application, a given frequency range, or a chosen antenna technology. In this context, the present review focuses on wearable antennas operating in the VHF band and part of the UHF frequency band (below 1 GHz). Choosing 1 GHz as an upper boundary for this review is highly relevant, as the operating frequency is usually the main parameter to discriminate among available antenna topologies, technologies and characterization techniques. Moreover, we limit our discussion on antennas for off-body radio links, also excluding antennas integrated into mobile terminals/cases and operating close to the body. Specifically, only wearable antennas that can be used separately from the radio unit are of interest here.VHF/UHF wearable antennas are mostly used in professional mobile radio communications for soldiers, emergency operators and law-enforcement personnel. VHF As far as VHF/UHF wearable antennas are concerned, many of their distinctive features are related to the fact that the corresponding free-space wavelength (with 30cm<<10m when 30MHz

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Embroidery and Related Manufacturing Techniques for Wearable Antennas: Challenges and Opportunities

Cited by 195 publications

References 99 publications

Design, realisation and evaluation of a liquid hollow torso phantom appropriate for wearable antenna assessment

Design, realisation and evaluation of a liquid hollow torso phantom appropriate for wearable antenna assessment

Wearable embroidered GPS textile antenna

Wearable Antennas for Off-Body Radio Links at VHF and UHF Bands: Challenges, the state of the art, and future trends below 1 GHz

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