A comprehensive analysis of various electro-textile materials for wearable antenna applications

A wide diversification in the designs of flexible wearable antenna is conceivable these days thanks to the innovative utilization of electro-textile materials. These textiles are usually made of conductive yarn either in a twisted or spurn fashion and in some instances have conductive materials interpolated in them to enable electrical conductivity. In this paper, the use of electro-textile as a candidate for wearable patch antenna design is demonstrated. For a comparative analysis of different performance parameters, three patch antennas are designed and fabricated using ShieldiT super, Cobaltex and Copper Polyester Taffeta. Their performances are analyzed in the context of wearable patch antenna working at the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band. For this comparative analysis, Jeans is used as the substrate due to its low dielectric constant and low loss tangent which results in a higher bandwidth and lower power loss. The measurement results from the fabricated wearable antennas are compared with the simulation results in terms of the reflection coefficient and received power. The objective of this comparative study is to identify the best performing electro-textiles for the next-generation IoT (Internet-of-things) and wearable biomedical sensor applications.