An active wearable dual-band antenna for GPS and Iridium satellite phone deployed in a rescue worker garment

An active wearable dual-band circularly polarized microstrip patch antenna for Global Positioning System and Iridium satellite phone applications is presented. It is constructed using flexible foam and fabric substrates, combined with copper-on-polyimide film conductors. A low-noise amplifier chip is integrated directly underneath the antenna patch. The antenna's performance is examined under bending and on-body conditions. The active antenna gain is higher than 25 dBi and the 3dB axial ratio bandwidth exceeds 183 MHz in free-space conditions. The antenna performance is robust to bending and on-body placement

A wearable active antenna for global positioning system and satellite phone

A wearable multiband circularly polarized active antenna is presented for use in Global Positioning System and Iridium satellite phone applications. The square patch antenna is constructed using flexible foam and fabric substrates and conductors etched on thin copper-on-polyimide films. The feed substrate integrates a compact low-noise amplifier chip directly underneath the antenna patch. The antenna performance is studied under bending conditions and in the presence of a human body. The active antenna exhibits a gain higher than 25 dBi and a 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth exceeding 183 MHz in free-space conditions and is robust to bending and on-body placement

Review of active textile antenna co-design and optimization strategies

This paper describes the challenges that arise in active wearable textile antenna design and optimization. After a short introduction, design strategies for two cases with different needs are discussed and examples are given for each design strategy. In the first case, a low-noise amplifier is connected directly to a 2.45 GHz ISM-band antenna by optimizing the antenna impedance to match the low-noise amplifier input impedance for optimal noise performance. In the second case, an aperture-coupled GPS antenna incorporating a discrete 50 Ω hybrid coupler is linked to a low-noise amplifier by means of a matching network to match the 50 Ω hybrid coupler port to the low-noise amplifier impedance for optimal noise performance

A stochastic framework for the variability analysis of textile antennas

A novel framework to accurately quantify the effect of stochastic variations of design parameters on the performance of textile antennas is developed and tested. First, a sensitivity analysis is applied to get a rough idea about the effect of these random variations on the textile antenna's performance. Next, a more detailed view is obtained by a generalized polynomial chaos technique that accurately quantifies the statistical distribution of the textile antenna's figures of merit, for a given range over which geometry and material parameters vary statistically according to a given distribution. The method is validated both for a simple inset-fed patch textile microstrip antenna and for a dual-polarized textile antenna. For the latter, the probability density function corresponding to its most sensitive design parameter, being the width, is experimentally estimated by means of measurements performed on 100 patches. A Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test proves that, for all considered examples, the results are as accurate as those obtained via Monte Carlo analysis, while the new technique is much more efficient. Indeed, speedups up to a factor 1667 are demonstrated

Active textile antennas in professional garments for sensing, localisation and communication

New wireless wearable monitoring systems integrated in professional garments require a high degree of reliability and autonomy. Active textile antenna systems may serve as platforms for body-centric sensing, localization and wireless communication systems, in the meanwhile being comfortable and invisible to the wearer. New design strategies combined with dedicated signal processing techniques greatly enhance the robustness of these systems. On the one hand, the large amount of real estate available in public regulated services' garments may be exploited to deploy multiple textile antennas. On the other hand, the size of each radiator may be designed large enough to ensure high radiation efficiency when deployed on the body. This antenna area is then reused by placing active electronics directly underneath and energy harvesters directly on top of the antenna patch. We illustrate this design paradigm by means recent textile antenna prototypes integrated in professional garments, providing sensing, positioning and communication capabilities

Active textile antennas in professional garments for sensing, localisation and communication

New wireless wearable monitoring systems integrated in professional garments require a high degree of reliability and autonomy. Active textile antenna systems may serve as platforms for body-centric sensing, localisation, and wireless communication systems, in the meanwhile being comfortable and invisible to the wearer. We present a new dedicated comprehensive design paradigm and combine this with adapted signal-processing techniques that greatly enhance the robustness and the autonomy of these systems. On the one hand, the large amount of real estate available in professional rescue worker garments may be exploited to deploy multiple textile antennas. On the other hand, the size of each radiator may be designed large enough to ensure high radiation efficiency when deployed on the body. This antenna area is then reused by placing active electronics directly underneath and energy harvesters directly on top of the antenna patch. We illustrate this design paradigm by means of recent textile antenna prototypes integrated in professional garments, providing sensing, positioning, and communication capabilities. In particular, a novel wearable active Galileo E1-band antenna is presented and fully characterized, including noise figure, and linearity performance