On the Development of Conductive Textile Antennas

UWB systems are becoming increasingly utilized due to their use in a variety of applications. Meanwhile, many advances have been achieved in the realm of conductive textiles. These textiles can be used as a sensing system or implemented wearable antennas. Combining these two applications is attractive for a number of reasons. First, wearable antennas constructed entirely from fabric offer a cost- effective, flexible solution when compared to rigid antennas. Second UWB technology is also attractive for body area network applications due to the low power operation and the inherent low radiated power in its system design.

In our implementation accurately defined textile antennas have been developed using a laser machine with high precision cutting capabilities. The textile antennas are comprised of a conductive fabric layer that is laser defined and can be easily incorporated into uniforms and garments using a simple iron-on process. We have developed and present a monopole antenna design geared towards UWB applications. We show that these UWB textile antennas can be applied to localization systems and can provide accurate estimation of wearers location.

Wide-band textile slot antennas have been developed too. The antennas are composed of three textile layers: the top and bottom are conducting layers and are precisely defined by a laser cutting machine, while the third layer is a textile dielectric layer sandwiched between these two conducting layers.

A single, two-element and four-element array slot antennas have been developed and successfully tested. The developed antennas offer flexible, light-weight and bendable properties. The iron-on process allows for the fabric to be washed without losing its adhesion. The antenna fabrication and the capabilities of the laser precision technique and its extension to development of large area antenna arrays will be presented. Conductive textiles can also be implemented to meet the requirements of combat wound detection systems. Using these textiles, a fabric-based sensor can be developed to accurately detect and localize the bullets penetration.