Electromagnetic properties of electro-textiles for wearable antennas applications

Abstract

Wearable, textile-based antennas get more and more attention for body-centric communications because it could be easily worn on body and integrated into clothes. Electro-textiles (e-textiles) are used as antenna patch and ground plane. The electromagnetic properties of the textiles play important roles in antenna design and performance. This paper focuses on the study of the electromagnetic properties of e-textiles for wearable antennas applications and mainly discusses the electromagnetic properties of e-textile cell and the influences of different woven densities and different e-textile materials to antenna performances. Simulation and measurement results show that if the e-textiles adopt woven pattern, then when the distance between two conductive fibers is within 2 mm, the e-textiles could be regarded as metal plane to design antennas. In addition, the results show that metal-plated woven fabric could be used as metal plane to design antennas, while non-woven fabric shows distinct differences.

Key words： wearable antenna; electro-textile (e-textile); electromagnetic properties

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61072136) and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 200700130046).

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