Design and simulation of a wearable textile monopole antenna for Body Centric Wireless Communications

Abstract

This paper presents a light-weight and simple structure of monopole antenna using conductive textile. Pure Copper Polyster Tafetta Fabric (PCPTF) is used as a conductive textile, in comparison with conventional microstrip monopole antenna. The prototype is designed with 40mm×60mm total dimension and spaced by a 2mm thick felt fabric for Body-Centric Wireless Communications (BCWC) operating in the 2.45 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. A parametric study has been carried out in order to investigate the antenna basic characteristics, thereby enhancing the antenna performance. The result showed that a slight downward frequency shift of wearable textile monopole was observed against the conventional monopole antenna. The wearable textile antenna is seen to produce about 4 dB higher in reflection coefficient than the conventional monopole antenna. Besides, a satisfactory gain characteristic was obtained by wearable textile monopole comparable to the conventional monopole antenna.