Evaluation of Planar Inkjet-Printed Antennas on a Low-Cost Origami Flapping Robot

Abstract

An investigation on antenna solutions for expendable origami paper flapping robots is presented. An origami flapping robotic bird that can be produced using standard A4 paper is employed. Antennas resonating at the two commonly used frequency bands, 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz, are designed for the limited space available on the folded origami structure. Two developments of the same dual-band monopole antenna are discussed. The first antenna is located on the robot's spine and the second on its tail. A space diversity configuration is also studied. The antennas are printed directly onto a photo paper substrate and then folded into an origami robotic crane's body structure. An ordinary desktop inkjet printer fitted with silver nanoparticle conductive ink cartridges has been employed. CST Microwave Studio TM has been used to design the antennas. A good agreement between the measured and simulated S11 results is achieved with a reasonable −10 impedance bandwidth realized in the three cases studied. The radiation patterns are omnidirectional in the XZ plane which is desirable for the specific application. The diversity configuration has a mutual coupling of < −23 and a gain of 1.4 dB and 2.8 dB at 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz respectively. The aim is to provide a new vision for antennas embedded into expandable flying robots based on traditional origami structures.

Lightweight and Low-Cost Deployable Origami Antennas—A Review

“…In [52], an investigation is carried out to develop antennas for origami paper flapping robots. An origami flapping robotic bird is used, which can be generated using regular A4 paper.…”

Overcoming Variability in Printed RF: A Statistical Method to Designing for Unpredictable Dimensionality

“…DW manufacturing in particular has expanded rapidly alongside increasing demand or flexible, embedded, and low-cost electronic components. Benefits of DW processes have encouraged a variety of deposition methods including micropen dispensing [4,5], aerosol jetting [6,7], ink jetting [8][9][10][11][12][13], stereolithography [14][15][16], and metal embedding [17][18][19][20][21][22]. These methods Designs 2022, 6, 13 2 of 13 can utilize materials as varied as metals, plastics [23], battery materials [24,25], and even organics [26].…”

Performance Enhancements of Fully Inkjet-Printing Technology for Antenna-in-Package and Substrate Integrated Waveguides

“…Among them, 3D printing shows the potential for facilitating spatial complex design [2], whereas inkjet-printing advances conventional printed circuit boards (PCBs) due to the directwrite feature, low fabrication cost, and the application of flexible, light, or environmental friendly substrates. Inkjet printing has served a wide range of EM applications, including antenna-in-package (AiP) applications [3], substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) circuits and antennas [4][5][6], flexible antennas [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] including origami [7][8][9][10][11] and wearable applications [12,17,21,24], radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags [25] and the chipless counterpart [26], and wireless sensors [27].…”

“…e third challenge is the development of flexible antenna arrays. Previously, several flexible substrates have been implemented, including paper [7][8][9][10][11], polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [12][13][14], polyimide (PI) [15][16][17], liquid crystal polymer (LCP) [18], FLGR02 [19], polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [20], polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) [21], and leather [22]. e antenna configuration includes monopole [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], patch [14,18,20,21], dipole [15], inverted-F [16], quasi-Yagi [19], and slot [22].…”

“…Previously, several flexible substrates have been implemented, including paper [7][8][9][10][11], polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [12][13][14], polyimide (PI) [15][16][17], liquid crystal polymer (LCP) [18], FLGR02 [19], polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [20], polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) [21], and leather [22]. e antenna configuration includes monopole [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], patch [14,18,20,21], dipole [15], inverted-F [16], quasi-Yagi [19], and slot [22]. Most of the antenna is a single element [7-13, 15-17, 19-22]; however, relatively few studies propose inkjet-printed flexible antenna arrays [14,18,[33][34][35]; and these antenna arrays have not been tested over folding angles.…”