Design of new wearable antennas and textile-based transmission lines

Flexible wearable antennas and their components are a fast growing research topic in modern communication systems. They are developed for various wearable applica tions, such as health monitoring, fitness tracking, rescuing, and telecommunications. Wearable antennas need to be compact, lightweight, flexible, and robust. In this thesis, two dual-band wearable antennas were developed, each with a differ ent design approach. The first antenna is a dual-band flexible folded shorted patch (FSP) antenna which operates at 400 MHz and 2.4 GHz. It uses polydimethylsilox ane (PDMS), which is low cost, flexible and robust, and is used as a substrate for wearable the FSP antenna. In addition, the FSP antenna also exploits the TM010 and TM001 modes. A comparative study was carried out to analyze the far-field radiation and directivity at the TM010 and TM001 modes between the FSP antenna and a conventional patch antenna using cavity model analysis. The proposed FSP antenna is suitable for military search and rescue operations and emergency services. The second antenna is a dual-band flexible circular polarized (CP) patch antenna operational at 1.575 GHz and 2.45 GHz. Kevlar was used as a substrate for the proposed antenna. The patch consists of truncated corners and four diagonal slits. An artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) plane was integrated within the design in order to reduce the backward scattered radiation towards the human body and also to improve the realized gain of the antenna. The AMC unit cell design consists of square slits, a square ring and was integrated as a 3 × 3 array of square patch AMC unit cells. The proposed antenna developed is suitable for WBAN and WLAN applications. A circular polarized (CP) patch antenna with a PDMS substrate was also designed and fabricated to test the durability and resiliency of PDMS as a polymer-based material suitable for use in wearable antennas. Robustness tests such as bent, wet, and temperature tests were performed and reported. Two prototypes of flexible wearable coaxial transmission lines were also designed and fabricated. Polyester (PES) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) textile materials were used to design prototypes of these cables. Shielding effectiveness and DC losses were measured and compared for the fabricated cables. The cables were also tested for bending, twisting and for suitability in environmental conditions. The highly flexible nature of these cables makes them suitable to use with wearable antennas for various applications. For example, the proposed cables can be used with previously detailed FPS antenna for military search and rescue operations. It should be mentioned that this thesis was done in collaboration with Leonardo, UK and J&D Wilkie, UK

Trigeminal Neuralgia: A Review

Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN) is a well-recognized syndrome characterized by lancinating attacks of severe facial pain. The diagnosis of TN is based on a history of characteristic pain attacks that are consistent with specific widely accepted criteria for the diagnosis. TN pain attacks may result from physiologic changes induced by a chronic partial injury to the brainstem trigeminal nerve root from a variety of causes. An early and accurate diagnosis of TN is important, because therapeutic interventions can reduce or eliminate pain attacks in the large majority of TN patients

Dual-band, dual-sense textile antenna with AMC backing for localization using GPS and WBAN/WLAN

A wearable textile antenna with dual-band and dual-sense characteristics is presented in this work. It operates at the 2.45 GHz band for WBAN and WLAN applications, and at the 1.575 GHz band for Global Positioning System (GPS) applications. An antenna backing based on an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) plane operating at 2.45 GHz band is introduced to reduce the backward radiation and to improve antenna gain. It consists of a 3×3 array of square patch unit cells, where each unit cell is integrated with four square slits and a square ring. A square-shaped patch is then located on top of the substrate as its radiator. To enable dual-band operation, two corners of this radiator are truncated, with each of the four corners incorporated with a rectangular slit to enable its circular polarization characteristic in the GPS band. Simulation and experimental results are in good agreement and indicate proper antenna operation with linear polarization in the 2.45 GHz band and circular polarization in the 1.575 GHz band, with realized gain of 1.94 dBi and 1.98 dBic, respectively

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages