Smart patch wearable antenna on Jeans textile for

body wireless communication

Shao-He Li Jiu-sheng Li
Centre for THz Research Centre for THz Research
China Jiliang University China Jiliang University
Hangzhou 310018, China Hangzhou 310018, China
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—Nowadays, there is much interest in body-worn textile

antenna which is made of common clothing and operates at
wireless communication bands. In this letter, a novel wearable
textile antenna is designed to operate at Industrial, Scientific and
Medical (ISM) bands of 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz for future wireless
systems. The performance characteristics of our present wearable
antenna are studied in free space and on human-body (a)
environments. The wearable textile antenna is compact with
omnidirectional radiation patterns and the total size is of
42mm×13mm. Due to its small size, the proposed antenna may
have practical applications in the smart wearable textile fields.

Keywords—wearable antenna, wearable textile, wireless device

(b)
Fig.1 Photo of the fabricated antenna (a) top view, (b) bottom view
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, wearable antennas have attracted much attention
due to low-cost, light-weight, flexible, and easily integrated into II. DEVICE STRUCUTRE
clothing [1-2]. Generally, the principal requirement for wearable It is well known that it is necessary to find a textile with a
antenna is based on textile materials and to integrate on the smart certain dielectric constant and thickness to meet the demand of
clothes. Conventionally, the wearable textile antenna must wearable antenna. In this paper, we choose a common denim as
provide the required operating frequency and bandwidth. the substrate material. At first, we should to obtain the dielectric
Simultaneously, these antennas need have omnidirectional constant of the denim. Here, we fabricated a patch based on this
radiation patterns. In recent years, some progresses have been denim and measured the resonant frequency by using vector
made in wearable antenna [3-9]. However, a compact wearable network analyzer. Then, we fit the measured results by using
antenna prototype is still very challenging. In this article, we commercial CST simulation software. At last, we obtain that the
present a wearable compact planar textile antenna operating in dielectric constant of the denim is 1.54 at the resonance
the 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz ISM bands. The photography of the frequency of 5.8 GHz. Figure 2 shows the measured and
fabricated antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The antenna consists of a simulated return loss of the fabricated patch structure based on
common denim layer and two radiating elements which are the denim. The measured results are good agreement with those
made of copper sheet. We know that the textile material of the simulation. The common denim is employed as substrate
generally has a low dielectric constant, which can improve the for our present wearable antenna. The dimension values of the
impedance bandwidth of the antenna and reduces the surface designed antenna prototype shown in Fig.3 are evaluated by
wave losses [10-11]. Since the fabric-based antenna can be using the commercial software CST Microwave Studio. Fig.3
easily integrated into clothes, textile materials are usually used (a) and 3(b) show the top and bottom view of the wearable
as interesting substrates for wearable antennas. The return loss antenna, respectively. A circuitous side structure on the
and radiation characteristics for the wearable antenna on and off substrate bottom is selected to remove stray capacitance and to
body within the operative frequency range from 1.5GHz to improve the impedance matching. Similarly, on the top side of
6.5GHz are measured using an Agilent Network Analyzer. the substrate, a rectangular monopole and a microstrip feedline
Excellent agreement can be found between the simulated and are used to increase the impedance bandwidth further. With the
measured characteristics of the wearable antenna. The proposed aid of CST software, the optimized design dimensions of our
antenna covers the requirement of the ISM bands. Details of the wearable antenna are as follows: L0=45mm, L1=18mm,
present wearable antenna prototype design and the parametric L2=10mm, L3=5mm, L4=8.5mm, L5=39mm, L6=5mm,
analysis are discussed in the next sections. L7=18mm, L7=4.5mm, L9=2.5mm, L10=5.5mm, L11=32mm,
L12=9.5mm, W0=20mm, W1=7mm, W2=5.5mm, W3=1.5mm,
W4=2mm, W5=1mm, W6=5mm, W7=2mm, W8=2mm,
W9=4mm.

978-1-5386-7302-7/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 Fig.4 Simulated and measured return loss of the wearable textile antenna
Fig.2 Simulated and measured return loss of the denim antenna

(a)

(b)
Fig.3 Configuration of the present wearable antenna: top (a) and bottom (b)
view

III. EXPRIMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Antenna Performance in Free-space

Figure 4 shows that the simulated and measured return-loss
characteristics of the proposed wearable textile antenna in free-
space obtained by using CST Microwave Studio. It can be
observed that -10dB return loss for the impedance bandwidth of
the antenna ranges from 2.37GHz to 2.98GHz and from
5.69GHz to 6.08GHz, which meet the ISM frequency bands of Fig.5 Simulated radiation patterns of the wearable textile antenna at 2.45GHz
2.45GHz and 5.8GHz. Figure 5(a) and 5(b) show the radiation and 5.8GHz
patterns of our fabricated antenna in the E-plane and H-plane at
2.45GHz and 5.8GHz, respectively. According to the radiation
B. Antenna Performance on Human-body
patterns, it clearly appears that the wearable textile antenna
displays monopole-like radiation pattern characteristics in the E- Human body includes fluid-rich. When the wearable textile
plane, and omnidirectional radiation characteristics in the H- antenna is placed on human body, the resonant frequency,
plane at the considered ISM frequencies. Note that our wearable impedance bandwidth, and radiation pattern of the designed
textile antenna covers two ISM bands of 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz. antenna will be potentially altered. For this reasons, the
characteristics of the designed antenna on a body phantom need
to be investigated. Figure 6 depicts the model of the wearable
textile antenna placed on the human body phantom with a
thickness of 25mm. Figure 7 shows the simulated return loss
versus frequency behavior of the wearable textile antenna return
loss for different using environments (on free space or on-body)
while the other parameters are kept their optimized values.
According to Figure 7, one sees that the second resonance
frequency moves upward as the using environments change
from free space to on-body. That is to say, the using
environments control the second resonance frequency. Fig.8
illustrates the E-plane and H-plane radiation patterns of the
wearable textile antenna on human body at 2.45GHz and
5.8GHz. It appears that the radiation pattern of our wearable
textile antenna remains stable in the operating frequency range
like its performance in free space. Fig.9 shows the measured
return loss of the present textile antenna on human body.
Compared with the antenna in free space condition, two centre
resonant frequencies on-body condition are slightly shifted
toward low frequency. But, one can see clearly that the
bandwidth of our present antenna still covers the ISM frequency
ranges (2.42-2.4835GHz and 5.725-5.85GHz). The results
further confirm that the present wearable antenna meets the
requirements of ISM communication.

Fig.8 Radiation patterns of our antenna on body

Fig.6 Model of the wearable textile antenna and human body phantom

Fig. 9 Measured return loss of our textile antenna, blue solid line (in free
space) and red dotted line (on human body)

Fig.7 Return loss of our antenna in free space and on-body IV. CONCLUSION
In this study, we demonstrate a novel wearable textile
antenna operating in ISM band. The constructed wearable
antenna has a small influence on the human body and can be
easy to manufacture on textiles with the size of 42×13mm2.
Owing to its remarkable operation bandwidth, size and
integration into clothes properties, the present antenna is [3] J. Huang, T. Jiang, Z. Wang, “A novel textile antenna using composite
expected to realize wearable antennas with human body. multiflament conductive threads for smart clothing applications,”
Microw. Opt. Tech. Lett., 58( 5):1232-1236, 2016.
[4] H. Xiaomu, A. Vandenbosch, “Wearable button antenna for dual-band
ACKNOWLEDGMENT WLAN applications with combined on and off-body radiation patterns,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 65(3): 1384 - 1387, 2017.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
[5] S. Dhupkariya, V. K. Singh, “Textile antenna for C-band satellite
Foundation of China No.61379024. communication application,” Journal of Telecommunication, Switching
Systems and Networks, 2(2), 20–25, 2015.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION [6] Mai A. R. Osman, M. K. A. Rahim, M. Azfar N. A. Samsuri, F. Zubir, K.
Kamardin, “Design, implementation and performance of ultra-wideband
Competing financial interests:The authors declare no textile antenna,” Progress In Electromagnetics Research B, 27, 307–325,
competing financial interests. 2011.
[7] M. E. Jalil, M. K. A. Rahim, N. A. Samsuri, N. A. Murad, H. A. Majid,
K. Kamardin, and M. A. Abdullah, “Fractal koch multiband textile
DATA AVAILABILITY antenna performance with bending, wet conditions and on the human
The experimental data used to support the findings of this body, ” Progress In Electromagnetics Research, 140, 633–652, 2013.
study are currently under embargo while the research findings [8] L. Yang, L. Martin, D. Staiculescu, C. Wong, M. Tentzeris, “Conformal
are commercialized. Requests for data, a month after publication magnetic composite RFID for wearable RF and bio-monitoring
applications,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., 56(12): 3223-3230,
of this article, will be considered by the corresponding author. 2008.
[9] J. Y. Kim, S. J. Ha, D. Kim, B. Lee, C. W. Jung, “Reconfigurable beam
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