Design and development of spiral and loop textile antennas for on body health monitoring

Abstract

This project is to design a spiral and loop textile antenna which operates at 2.4GHz frequency. Since the development of wearable system has opened the possibilities to integrate antennas into clothing, the performance of the antenna is investigated whether it can be applied for wireless applications. Furthermore, the introduction of these textile antennas has revealed the need for wireless communication systems that are unnoticeably integratable into clothing. A textile antenna is proposed to be operated at 2.4GHz. The material of the substrate that has been chosen is felt which possesses relative permittivity, εr of 1.44 and thickness of 3.0mm. Sheildlt is used as the patch which also known as the antenna which has a thickness of 0.17mm. The felt fabric is chosen because of the εr which is close to 1 and its piled structure that results hydrophobic characteristics. These are great in designing antenna into its optimum performance. The simulation of the design had been carried out by using Microwave CST Studio and the textile antenna had been fabricated. The fabricated antenna had been measured in term of the radiation patterns, the return loss (dB) and the bandwidth which has the return loss of -25 dB and bandwidth of 450MHz.