Robust Wearable UHF Antennas for Security Applications

Wearable electronics are occupying an increasing portion of our daily activities. The span of wearable applications extends from purely medical, over different security services to various sports and fashion devices. Antennas play one of the most important roles in wearable networks as they have a key contribution to the overall efficiency of a wearable wireless link. This work focuses on the design and practical realization of robust wearable antennas intended for voice communication inside the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band. The proposed antennas are mainly envisioned for security services such as military, police or rescue services. To this aim, several questions have been addressed while analyzing and designing the proposed antennas. The on-body environment significantly affects the characteristics of an antenna. The coupling between the antenna and the host body influences both the antenna and the body characteristics. On one hand, the complex lossy nature of the hosting body tends to deteriorate the radiation performances of the wearable antenna, while on the other hand, the radiation from the antenna can cause an increase of the temperature of the wearerâs body (localy and/or of the entire body). The wearability aspect also requires that the size and the profile of the antenna are appropriate so that it can be easily integrated into the wearerâs garment. The size of the wearable antennas becomes more critical at lower frequencies (for instance UHF), where the wavelengths become comparable with the size of the body, thus adding an additional limitation while selecting the type of the antenna. A Planar Inverted F Antenna (PIFA) was selected as an appropriate antenna candidate addressing the introduced specifications. In parallel with the antenna prototype, a suitable technology, combining flexible conductors and stretchable substrates, has been proposed. The suggested technology also enables an adjustment of the electric properties of the designated substrate materials. Several antenna prototypes were successfully designed, fabricated and characterized. Finally, a set of tests in realistic everyday conditions were performed, thus validating the performance of the proposed antenna concepts along with the proposed technology and assessing their potential of being used for commercial purposes. We believe that the obtained results provide useful guidelines for future design of robust flexible wearable antennas

1-D broadside-radiating leaky-wave antenna based on a numerically synthesized impedance surface

A newly-developed deterministic numerical technique for the automated design of metasurface antennas is applied here for the first time to the design of a 1-D printed Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) for broadside radiation. The surface impedance synthesis process does not require any a priori knowledge on the impedance pattern, and starts from a mask constraint on the desired far-field and practical bounds on the unit cell impedance values. The designed reactance surface for broadside radiation exhibits a non conventional patterning; this highlights the merit of using an automated design process for a design well known to be challenging for analytical methods. The antenna is physically implemented with an array of metal strips with varying gap widths and simulation results show very good agreement with the predicted performance

Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure

A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium

Applications of Antenna Technology in Sensors

During the past few decades, information technologies have been evolving at a tremendous rate, causing profound changes to our world and to our ways of living. Emerging applications have opened u[ new routes and set new trends for antenna sensors. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the adaptation of antenna technologies for sensor and sensing applications has become more important. Now, the antennas must be reconfigurable, flexible, low profile, and low-cost, for applications from airborne and vehicles, to machine-to-machine, IoT, 5G, etc. This reprint aims to introduce and treat a series of advanced and emerging topics in the field of antenna sensors