WEARABLE TEXTILE ANTENNA USING

ULTRA WIDEBAND

Session (2011-2015)
Program:
Bachelors of Science in Telecommunication
Submitted By:
Najib Ullah khan

23419

Noor Islam

23422

Imran Khan

24607

Faraz khan

24540

Supervised By:
Engineer Basir Usman

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

HAZARA UNIVERSITY, MANSEHRA
August 2015

FINAL APPROVAL
This is to certify that we have checked the project report titled WEARABLE
TEXTILE ANTENNA USING ULTRA WIDEBAND. Submitted by Najib Ullah
Khan, Noor Islam, Imran Khan, Faraz Khan. It is our judgment that this thesis is of
sufficient standard to warrant its acceptance by the Hazara university Mansehra for the
BS degree in telecommunication.
Committee

Supervisor

____________________________
Engr. Basir Usman
Lecturer
Department of information technology
Hazara university Mansehra.

External supervisor

____________________________

Dated

____________________________

Head of Department

____________________________
NOOR-UL-AMIN
Head of department
Information technology
Hazara University Mansehra.

DEDICATION
To Our loving and respected parents who have always been a great source of inspiration
for us and their guidance and advice always kept us on the right path and their prayers
and good wishes have been a source of great strength for us. We also dedicate this
project to our dearest teacher Engineer Basir Usman.

ii

DECLARATION
We hereby declare that this thesis is based on the results found by ourselves.
Materials of work found by other researcher are mentioned by reference. This
thesis neither in whole nor in parts has been previously submitted for any other degree.

Name: Najib Ullah Khan

Signature: ____________________

Name: Noor Islam

Signature: ____________________

Name: Imran Khan

Signature: ____________________

Name: Faraz khan

Signature: ____________________

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Praise to Almighty Allah, who bestowed upon us the potential and ability to accomplish
this task. We wish to express our appreciations to those who have served on our graduate
final project. Firstly we want to express our sincere gratitude to our supervisor Engineer
Basir Usman for his continuous guidance and support throughout our project at Hazara
University Mansehra. His constant support and encouragement has helped us to learn a
great deal all through the project. He was instrumental in providing not only all the
guidance but also inspiration that we needed. His wisdom and kindness had been valuable
and made the whole thesis experience enjoyable. Furthermore, we want to give a deeply
thank to all of our colleagues for their useful comments, suggestions and discussion on
our work.

iv

ABSTRACT
With the rapid growth and use of wireless communication system more and more people
are taking advantage of portable computing system on daily basis. Also with the
advancement in electronic industry new and sophisticated wireless devices have been
introduced which are being closed to human body. There has been a significant progress
in UWB research after the U.S. Federal communication commission (FCC) allocated a
frequency range with a bandwidth of 7.5 GHz from 3.1-10.6 GHz for ultra wideband
applications. Ultra wideband (UWB) technology was earlier limited to special
applications, primarily in the military area and then to electronic warfare. The antennas
were usually horn antennas or modified, rigid horn antennas, sometime in combination
with reflectors. Wearable intelligent textile system is an innovative fast growing field in
application oriented fields. In recent years, body-centric wireless communication
becomes an important part of fourth generation mobile communication system (4G).
Utilization of wearable textiles in the antenna segment has been seen on the rise due to
the recent miniaturization of wireless devices. Wearable and fabric-based antenna has
become one of the dominant research topics in antennas for body-centric
communications. The review presented here intended to disclose the unconventional
antenna technology including UWB technology for wearable applications. Contributions
by various researchers have been compiled keeping in mind background of UWB
technology, the wearable antenna and specification of the antenna, material for the
antenna and analysis that must be done to design.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
1.1

Wearable textile system ....................................................................................... 1

1.2

Background .......................................................................................................... 2

1.2.1 Ideas ................................................................................................................... 3

1.3

Ultra-wideband ..................................................................................................... 4

1.4

Spectrum............................................................................................................... 5

1.5

Polarization........................................................................................................... 6

1.6

Application ........................................................................................................... 6

1.7

Bandwidth ............................................................................................................ 8

Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................. 9
LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................... 9
2.1

History and background ....................................................................................... 9

2.2

Transmission line ............................................................................................... 16

2.3

Radiation pattern ................................................................................................ 18

2.4 Directivity ............................................................................................................... 20

Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................... 22
ANALYSIS AND DESIGN ............................................................................................. 22
3.1

Overview ............................................................................................................ 22

3.2

Construction of wearable antennas .................................................................... 22

3.3

Final Design ....................................................................................................... 24

3.4

Substrate ............................................................................................................. 26

vi

3.5

Radiating element ............................................................................................... 26

Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................................... 27
SIMULATION AND RESULTS ...................................................................................... 27
4.1

Simulation in HFSS............................................................................................ 27

4.2

System requirements for HFSS .......................................................................... 27

4.2.1

Minimum System Requirements: ............................................................... 27

4.2.2

Recommended Minimum Configuration (for Optimal Performance) ........ 27

4.3

Antenna geometry .............................................................................................. 28

4.4

Antenna design ................................................................................................... 28

4.5

Results ................................................................................................................ 29

4.5.1

VSWR ......................................................................................................... 29

4.5.2

Return loss .................................................................................................. 30

4.5.3

Radiation pattern ......................................................................................... 31

4.5.4

Efficiency .................................................................................................... 32

4.5

Overall result ...................................................................................................... 32

Chapter 5 ........................................................................................................................... 34
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK ....................................................................... 34
5.1

About Antenna ................................................................................................... 34

5.2

Future work ....................................................................................................... 34

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 35
LINKS ........................................................................................................................... 35

vii

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Ultra Wideband range ......................................................................................... 5
Figure 2: Showing bandwidth of ultra-wideband ............................................................... 8
Figure 3: Transmission line .............................................................................................. 17
Figure 4: 2D pattern .......................................................................................................... 19
Figure 5: 3D pattern .......................................................................................................... 20
Figure 6: Antenna design .................................................................................................. 25
Figure 7: Final result ......................................................................................................... 25
Figure 8: Substrate ............................................................................................................ 26
Figure 9: Radiating material ............................................................................................. 26
Figure 10: Detailed design ................................................................................................ 28
Figure 11: VSWR ............................................................................................................. 29
Figure 12: VSWR result.................................................................................................... 30
Figure 13: Return loss ....................................................................................................... 30
Figure 14: 2D radiation pattern ......................................................................................... 31
Figure 15: Efficiency ........................................................................................................ 32

viii

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Geometry of antenna........................................................................................... 28
Table 2: Gain and frequency ............................................................................................. 29
Table 3: Gain..................................................................................................................... 33

ix

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1

Wearable textile system

The wearable textile system aim is to improve quality of life by enhancing the
functionality of clothing through a combination of textiles and electronics. The vision is a
future electronic system as an integral part of everyday clothing and serving as an
intelligent personal assistant. The new generation of garments known as smart clothes
has the ability to monitor users bio signal and communicate this information to the
health control system to provide real time information about persons health. However
optimum integration of an antenna into a garment can be achieved by making the antenna
out of textile material. The implementation of an antenna in textiles is the straight
forward way following the philosophy of wearable computing. However making an
antenna truly wearable introduces additional constraints. Compared with the conventional
antennas, textile antenna must be droppable. Dropability means that something can be
bent in all directions in the same time. A textile satisfies this property in contrast to
standard flexible substrate with their preferred bending direction. Additionally, a textile
antenna must have a flat and planner structure such that it doesnt affect wearing comfort.
The availability of conducting textile materials, known as electro textiles has enabled the
manufacturing of truly textile antennas and makes them an unobtrusive part of the
wearable textile system. The earliest demand for wearable antennas was set by military
for concealing the identity of soldier carrying radio in the battlefield. The conventional

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
monopole antenna was clearly visible from the distance so it was proposed to incorporate
the antenna into the soldiers uniform which added advantage of eliminating devices that
can tangle in trees, foliage and low height obstructions. These antennas were constructed
using conductive cloth and have advantages of being light weight, inexpensive and low
maintenance cost. They can operate in all weather conditions [1].
Another potentially demanding area of wearable antennas is in the health section for
detection of early cancer using imaging method. One of the new imaging methods
microwave imaging involves using non-ionizing radiation to image the human body.
The reflected wave are processed and used to make a comparison between healthy tissues
and abnormal ones. A mono pole antenna has been used for this work. However, research
is also going on to develop better antennas for microwave imaging and textile antennas
which are comfortable against skins and would seem to be a natural choice in this area.

1.2

Background

The ever growing miniaturization of electronic devices, combined with recent

developments in wearable computer technology, are leading to a creation of a wide range
of devices that can be carried by users in their pockets or in some cases attached to their
bodies. These trends in computing tools are consistent with societys historical need to
evolve its tools and products into more portable, mobile and even wearable form factors.
Watches, radios and telephones are important examples of this trend. Communications
technologies are heading towards a future in which user specified information is no
longer limited to the static environment of the office or home. Well-designed mobile and
wearable products can offer more portable and effective ways for people to access this

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
information on demand. In recent years the development of wearable computer systems
has been rapid. They are becoming more and more light weight and quite soon there will
be a wide range of unobtrusive wearable and ubiquitous computing devices integrated
into daily clothing to create a so called Body Area Network (BAN). To reach this
featherweight level requires optimization of every single part and subpart of the wearable
system. As can be seen a body worn wearable system consists of electronic devices
normally situated on or in close proximity to the human body. The wired connection
between devices in a BAN may be inconvenient for a user. This may be due partly to
weight and partly to restriction in movement and prescriptions placed on clothing design
and manufacture. Therefore the need for comfort ability is pushing the trend of wireless
communication in place of wired one.[2]
1.2.1 Ideas
A very different type of ideas presented by different scientists to design wearable
antennas in which some ideas are highlighted below:
i.

A button type antenna has been proposed with a bandwidth between 3.5GHz to
12GHz but its dimensions were 36mm20.8mm.

ii.

One other type of antenna has been presented which has operation on 2.45GHz
and its dimensions were 20mm20mm.

iii.

One type of textile antenna was presented for Ultra wide band and its dimensions
were 40mm40mm.

Now among the above proposed antennas some were only covering only ISM bands
while other were only covering UWB so now how about an antenna which will cover

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
both the ISM and UWB and here such type of antenna is presented which will cover both
ISM and UWB with a dimensions of 30mm30mm.
Now here too some antennas can have a substrate of cotton while other may have a
nylon substrate but the antenna presented here will have a substrate made up of jeans.

1.3

Ultra-wideband

Ultra-wideband communication is fundamentally different from all other communication

because its employs extremely narrow RF pulses to communicate between transmitter
and receivers. Utilizing short-duration pulses as the building blocks for communication
directly generates a very wide bandwidth and offers several advantages, such as large
throughput, covertness, robustness to jamming, and co-existence with current radio
services. UWB is not a new technology; in fact, it was first employed by Guglielmo
Marconi in 1901 to transmit mars code sequence across the Atlantic Ocean using spark
gap radio transmitters. However, the benefit of a larger bandwidth and the capability of
implementing multi user systems provided by electromagnetic pulses were never
conceded at that time. Approximately fifty years after Marconi, modern pulse-base
transmission was used in military applications in the form of impulse radars.

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Figure 1: Ultra Wideband range [1]

1.4

Spectrum

Since the wearable textile antenna is working from 3.5 to 12 GHz between these
bandwidths some spectrums do lay which are:
a. 2.45GHz to 5.8GHz ISM bands is reserved for industrial, scientific and medical
purposes.
b. FCC (federal communication commission) allocates 3.1 to 10.6 GHz for
commercial use.
The wearable textile antenna covers both ISM and UWB. ISM band is reserved for
Industrial, Scientific and Medical applications while UWB stands for Ultra Wide Band.
UWB operates of low power and very low power is radiated when operated in
applications like wearable computing. As a result UWB is very attractive for battery
operated body devices and similarly the ISM is highly important because of application
like Bluetooth.

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.5

Polarization

The antenna polarization is the same as the polarization of its radiating wave. There are
basically three types of polarization: linear, circular and elliptical. Which polarization is
generated depends on how the current moves in the antenna. For a linear polarization, the
current should travel along one axis; for a circular polarization, two orthogonal currents
with 90-degree phase offset should be created on the antenna. In practice, mixed
polarizations may be found in many antennas since an antenna has to meet many
requirements. Trade-offs may have to be made and as a result a pure linearly polarized or
circularly polarized antenna may not be possible or necessary. For example, most of the
mobile phone antennas are not purely linearly polarized since they are employed to
receive signals with mixed polarizations. However, for a line-of-sight communication
system, the polarization has to be matched in order to achieve the maximum efficiency of
the whole system. Two orthogonally polarized antennas cannot communicate with each
other due to polarization mismatch [6].

1.6

Application

As it is pretty clear that a wearable textile antenna is a PANs (Personal Area

Networks) and BANs (Body Area Networks) so the main specific advantage of textile
antenna is to give advancement to the quality of human life by providing a wearable
continuous monitoring system. Monitoring is an activity used in danger situations such as
mining, diving, hiking and medical as well as other sorts of military and security actions,
so if we use cloths for communication purposes then it will be more efficient.

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
As the textile antenna is wireless so it is highly preferred, moreover the wearable textile
antenna is washable too, so no fear of being wet or muddy. Here some of the main
benefits of the textile antennas are summarized below.
i.

Textile antennas are inexpensive.

ii.

Textile antennas are lightly weighted.

iii.

Textile antennas have Low maintenance.

iv.

Textile antennas are Unnoticeable (military)

v.

Textile antennas have no set up requirements.

vi.

Textile antennas have No damage from obstacles

vii.

Textile antennas are wireless network based systems.

viii.

Textile antennas can be easily moved from one place to other.

Now taking a glance at the above points, it seems that wearable antennas have covered
about all the areas like sports, defense and civil domains. For the users of using such type
of systems to be more independent and relaxed while performing their activities, the
wireless networks are highly necessary and for this purpose the wearable textile antenna
is designed which is also wirelessly communicated system.
The most important aspect of wearable textile antenna is that, it is Omni directional so it
can communicate in any direction. For any antenna a substrate is required and for a
wearable antenna it should be flexible so that it can be adopted in any position like
bending, standing, sitting etc.

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.7

Bandwidth

Many antenna parameters are functions of frequency. When the frequency is changed, the
radiation pattern may also be changed, which may result in changes to the directivity,
gain and other parameters. Thus, it is important to ensure that the right parameters are
chosen when the antenna bandwidth is considered.

Figure 2: Showing bandwidth of ultra-wideband [2]

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1

History and background

The research work done on wearable antennas can be categorized not only on the basis of
type of antennas used like micro strip patch antenna, PIFA antenna, E-shaped and U-slot
patch antenna but also on their intended applications like FM radio and TV, cellular
mobile communications, WLAN, GPS and UWB applications. The up to date research
that has been done so far on wearable antennas and their applications is summarized
below: The first published research work on wearable antennas dates back to 1999 when
a dual band planar antenna was designed for wearable and ubiquitous equipment. In this
work the conventional Planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) was modified by inserting a U
shaped slot to make a dual band antenna that works at mobile cellular band GSM 900 and
Bluetooth 2.4GHz band. Although the materials used in this design were conventional
rigid type but the proposed idea was to put this antenna on the sleeve to make it a
wearable antenna design. The effect of the human body on the radiation characteristics of
this antenna was minimized due to the presence of the ground plane.
After this idea of antennas for wearable communication systems the research on wearable
antennas generated significant interest among different university and industry
researchers. To make wearable antennas comfortable to be worn a fabric based mobile
phone antenna for GSM 900 was designed. The conducting parts were constructed with
copper plated rip-stop nylon and a foam spacer was used as the dielectric. The antenna

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

was placed on the outside of the upper arm in order not to be affected by human and on
body efficiency was reported to be 50%. A flexible substrate based printed IFA wearable
antenna for 2.4GHz WLAN and UMTS 2100MHz was proposed for smart clothing in. A
micro strip based fleece fabric antenna for an emergency workers outfit was designed
working in the 2.4GHz WLAN band. The effect of bending on wearable microstrip patch
antenna designed for 2.5GHz was studied in. It was observed that the resonant frequency
changed when antenna was bent in the E-plane while H-plane bending has minimal effect
on the resonant frequency. Wearable antennas are finding increasing use in military
uniforms as radio operators are easily identified by their protruding antennas and can be
targeted by the enemy. In addition, the antennas can be easily broken by trees and bushes
which prohibit their mobility. To overcome this problem different wearable antenna
designs seamlessly integrated into soldier uniform have been proposed. As any
conducting structure can radiate if designed properly some researchers proposed to use
the metal button of jackets and belts as antennas. The first U shaped patch antenna design
was successfully implemented for wearable applications using copper tape and fleece
fabric. With the increasing success of wearable antenna designs some researchers started
exploring new applications. One wearable antenna design for FM reception was
proposed. Different antenna types including half wave thin and wide dipole, Meandered
dipole and helical antenna were fabricated using copper tape on fleece fabric. As textile
conducting materials continue to find use in wearable antenna design it was deemed
necessary to characterize their electrical properties. The measurement techniques of
surface resistivity and conductivity of electro textiles was carried out in. The use of
electro textiles in wearable antennas applications was explored in. For this purpose a

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

10

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

fabric antenna was designed and its efficiency was reported to be 80%. This research
supported the idea of using textile conducting materials in place of traditional copper for
light weight wearable antennas. The effect of conductivity of electro textiles on wearable
antennas performance was explored in. Six WLAN fabric antennas were fabricated with
different conducting materials and it was concluded that for optimal performance of the
antenna i.e. the same as a conventional copper made antenna, the conducting fabric
should not be discontinuous in the direction of current flow. Also it must have good
conductivity and must be densely knitted. In order to enhance the accuracy of modeling
conducting textile based wearable antennas, one experimental method to retrieve the
radio frequency material parameters of electro textiles has also been proposed [3].
Similarly the effect of low conductivity of conducting textiles on the input matching,
resonant frequency and gain has been explored in. As different textile materials start
appearing in wearable antenna design it was deemed necessary to characterize the
performance of wearable antenna with different textiles. In six different fabrics were
tested as wearable antenna substrates. It was concluded that the textile material should be
inelastic and it should have a smooth surface so that there is uniform separation distance
between antenna and textile substrate. As wearable antennas are meant to work in close
proximity to human body it is very important to characterize the effect of human body on
its performance. The first in depth results showing textile antenna performance in the
vicinity of human body was given in. The results showed that wearable antennas
performed well near human body and performance was only marginally affected by
human body interaction. Most of wearable antenna designs reviewed so far are linearly
polarized. The first circular polarized wearable antenna was presented in. The

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

11

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

conventional corner truncated patch was employed for this purpose. Another
conventional technique of feeding along the diagonal of square patch was employed in to
design WLAN wearable antenna with circular polarization. The promising results showed
that standard antenna design techniques works equally well for textile based antennas.
Applying conventional designs for wideband and dual band antennas an E-shaped
wearable antennas was also proposed for dual band operation and results were quite
similar to conventional E-shaped patch design. In order to make wearable antenna for
people working in tough and harsh environments like fire-fighters Micro strip patch
antenna working in 2.4GHz WLAN band was designed using flame resistant Aramid
fabric. As this fabric is thin so multilayer structure was used to enhance the impedance
bandwidth. The circular polarization was achieved by exciting two orthogonal modes by
probe feeding along the diagonal. Similarly a GPS wearable antenna was proposed using
fire resistant and water resistant foam substrate. This antenna was particularly suitable for
integration into rescue workers garments. This antenna was shown to work well even
when covered with textiles and when integrated into a jacket or worn on the human body.
In order to improve the bond between the conducting layer and textile fabric a new
assembly technique based on adhesive sheet and ironing was proposed by designing a
rectangular ring antenna using fleece fabric and electro textile. Wearable antennas based
on modified dipole and folded dipole array designs were presented in.The use of
wearable antennas was also explored for Radio frequency identification (RFID)
applications. To make wearable antenna feather light for athletes as they use very light
clothes a flexible and light weight antenna at 2.4GHz for athletes was proposed in. To
improve the wireless communication link reliability diversity antenna configuration of

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

12

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

body worn textile antenna system at 2.4GHz was proposed in. An extensive treatment of
design and characterization of purely textile patch antennas was carried out in. In this
research work micro strip line feed patch antennas were fabricated for Bluetooth
applications. Both linear as well circular polarized designs were investigated. To simulate
the bending behavior antennas were put on a cylinder of 37mm and 100mm which are
typical dimensions of human arm and leg. It was observed that circular polarization can
deteriorate if bending radius is too small. As the number of wireless communication
systems is increasing there is a need for multiple antenna systems. Distributed body worn
transceiver system using electro textile antennas was investigated in. As there is a large
space available on human body or clothing so multi textile antennas are proposed to
combat multipath fading in wireless channels. In different fabrication techniques of
textile antennas were discussed. For conducting part of the antenna copper tape, copper
thread and conductive spray was used to see their effect on wearable antenna
performance. The effect of human body presence on the antenna reflection coefficient
and radiation pattern was also discussed. It was concluded that for wearable antenna to be
accepted by general public they should be hidden, small in size and weight. The first dual
polarized textile patch antenna for integration into protective garments and working in the
2.4GHz band was proposed in. The first multiband wearable antenna that works in GSM
900, DCS 1800, PCS 1900, UMTS 2100 and 2.4GHz WLAN was designed using
neoprene substrate which is normally used by scuba divers. The feeding method has an
important role in the overall characteristics of the devices specially the impedance
bandwidth of antenna. The first aperture coupled patch antenna for integration into
wearable textile systems was explored in. In this feeding method the feeding transmission

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

13

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

line is totally isolated from the antenna this allowed optimal selection of antenna
substrate and feed substrate material. Also this feeding method is more convenient and
comfortable for the user and thus results into highly efficient and fully flexible wearable
antenna. The large space available on the human body or clothing can be utilized for
designing a high gain antenna array. This concept was explored in for a body worn
electro textile antenna array. An eight element patch antenna array was constructed in the
2.45GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band. They were shown to have
comparable performance to their conventional antenna counterparts. Ultra wide band
(UWB) is

an emerging wireless technology recently approved by Federal

Communications Commission (FCC). It allowed high data rate over short distances with
low power consumption. The first UWB textile antenna was proposed in. Two design
topologies were investigated. The first was a coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed disc
monopole antenna and other a micro strip fed annular slot antenna. All designs had small
thickness of 0.5mm and were flexible enough to be easily integrated into clothing. An
UWB antenna based on a button structure was proposed in. Electromagnetic bandgap
(EBG) structures also known also known as High Impedance surface (HIS) or Artificial
Magnetic Conductor (AMC) surfaces are finding increasing use in conventional antenna
designs. The reason for this being their unique electromagnetic properties of in-phase
reflection of plane waves and stop band for propagation of surfaces waves. These
properties have been exploited in designing low profile antennas and improving the
bandwidth, gain and backward radiation in patch antenna designs. The use of EBG
structures in wearable antennas designs has not been explored to a great extent. However
some designs have been proposed which have incorporated them. The first EBG based

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

14

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

antenna design for wearable application was proposed in. Although it was not a truly
wearable antenna as it was constructed of traditional rigid FR4 substrate however the idea
was to use this for wearable applications. A 2.45GHz patch antenna was fabricated on a
thin FR4 substrate and EBG pattern was etched on the ground plane of the antenna. It
was observed that the effect of EBG was to increase the impedance bandwidth, gain and
reduce the backward radiation as well as reduce the size of the antenna. The first truly
wearable EBG antenna was put forward in. In this design a patch antenna was fabricated
on top of periodic square patch array working as EBG. Copper tape was used to make
conducting parts of an antenna while fleece fabric was used as an antenna substrate. The
effect of the EBG structure was twofold. First to increase the input match bandwidth by
50% and secondly to reduce the antenna size for a fixed frequency by 30%. The effect of
wearable EBG antenna bending on input match and impedance bandwidth was examined
in. It was shown that when antenna is bent along the direction which determines its
resonant length affects it has the greatest effect on the input matching and impedance
bandwidth. A dual band triangular patch antenna integrated with dual band EBG was
proposed in. The dual band was achieved by a parasitic element close to the triangular
patch. The dual band EBG was realized by using a combination of patches and concentric
rings. It was shown that EBG structure helped in reducing the back radiation by up to
15dB. In a CPW fed dual band wearable antenna was integrated with a dual band EBG
structure. The antenna operated in the 2.45GHz and 5GHz WLAN bands. The EBG
structure consisted of only 3 x 3 EBG elements but helped in reducing the backward
radiation towards the body by over 10dB and also improved the antenna gain by 3dB.

Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

15

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

After this extensive review of research work done in the wearable antenna design field,
the aims and objectives of this thesis will be highlighted in the next section.

2.2

Transmission line

In communications and electronic engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable

designed to carry alternating current of radio frequency, that is, currents with
a frequency high enough that their wave nature must be taken into account. Transmission
lines are used for purposes such as connecting radio transmitters and receivers with
their antennas, distributing cable television signals, and computer network connections.
Ordinary electrical cables suffice to carry low frequency AC, such as mains power, which
reverses direction 100 to 120 times per second (cycling 50 to 60 times per second).
However, they cannot be used to carry currents in the radio frequency range or higher,
which reverse direction millions to billions of times per second, because the energy tends
to radiate off the cable as radio waves, causing power losses. Radio frequency currents
also tend to reflect from discontinuities in the cable such as connectors, and travel back
down the cable toward the source. These reflections act as bottlenecks, preventing the
power from reaching the destination. Transmission lines use specialized construction
such as precise conductor dimensions and spacing, and impedance matching, to carry
electromagnetic signals with minimal reflections and power losses. Types of transmission
line

include ladder

line, coaxial

cable, dielectric

slabs, strip

line, optical

fiber,

and waveguides. The higher the frequency of electromagnetic waves moving through a
given cable or medium, shorter the wavelength of the waves. Wavelength also depends
on the material composition of the transmission line and is always shorter than the
wavelength in free space of the same frequency. Transmission lines must be used when
Wearable Textile Antenna Using Ultra Wideband

16

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

the frequency is high enough that the wavelength of the waves begins to approach the
length of the cable used. To conduct energy at frequencies above the radio range, such
as millimeter waves, infrared, and light, the waves become much smaller than the
dimensions of the structures used to guide them, so transmission line techniques become
inadequate and the methods of optics are used.
The theory of sound wave propagation is very similar mathematically to that of
electromagnetic waves, so techniques from transmission line theory are also used to build
structures to conduct acoustic waves; and these are also called transmission lines.
For the purposes of analysis, an electrical transmission line can be modeled as a two-port
network (also called a quadruple network), as follows:

Figure 3: Transmission line

In the simplest case, the network is assumed to be linear (i.e. the complex voltage across
either port is proportional to the complex current flowing into it when there are no
reflections), and the two ports are assumed to be interchangeable. If the transmission line
is uniform along its length, then its behavior is largely described by a single parameter
called the characteristic impedance, symbol Z0. This is the ratio of the complex voltage

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17

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

of a given wave to the complex current of the same wave at any point on the line. Typical
values of Z0 are 50 or 75 ohms for a coaxial cable, about 100 ohms for a twisted pair of
wires, and about 300 ohms for a common type of untwisted pair used in radio
transmission.
When sending power down a transmission line, it is usually desirable that as much power
as possible will be absorbed by the load and as little as possible will be reflected back to
the source. This can be ensured by making the load impedance equal to Z0, in which case
the transmission line is said to be matched.
The total loss of power in a transmission line is often specified in decibels per meter
(dB/m), and usually depends on the frequency of the signal. The manufacturer often
supplies a chart showing the loss in dB/m at a range of frequencies. A loss of 3 dB
corresponds approximately to a halving of the power.
High-frequency transmission lines can be defined as those designed to carry
electromagnetic waves whose wavelengths are shorter than or comparable to the length of
the line. Under these conditions, the approximations useful for calculations at lower
frequencies are no longer accurate. This often occurs with radio, microwave and optical
signals, metal, and with the signals found in high-speed digital circuits [4].

2.3

Radiation pattern

The radiation pattern of an antenna is a plot of the radiated field/power as a function of

the angle at a fixed distance, which should be large enough to be considered far field.

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Most antennas have certain symmetrical features, thus, in reality; the most important
patterns are the radiation patterns in the two main planes: the E-plane and the H-plane.
The E-plane is the plane that the electric field E-lies on, while the H-plane is the plane
that the magnetic field-His on. For the ideal current element case, the electric field isE ()
and the magnetic field is H (), thus the E-plane pattern is the field E () measured as a
function of when the angle and the distance are fixed, while the H-plane pattern is the
field E () measured as a function of when the angle and the distance are fixed. The
E-plane (at =0) and H-plane (at =/2) patterns of the short current element.
Obviously, this antenna has an omnidirectional pattern in the H-plane; this is a desirable
feature for many mobile antennas since the antenna is not sensitive to orientation.
Another special case is called the isotropic antenna, which has the same radiation power
at all angles. This is a hypothetical case and cannot be realized in practice, but we do
sometimes use it as a reference for analysis.

Figure 4: 2D pattern

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Figure 5: 3D pattern

2.4 Directivity
From the field point of view, the most important quantitative information on the antenna
is the directivity, which is a measure of the concentration of radiated power in a particular
direction. It is defined as the ratio of the radiation intensity in a given direction from the
antenna to the radiation intensity averaged over all directions. The average radiation
intensity is equal to the total radiated power divided by 4. If the direction is not
specified, the direction of maximum radiation is implied. Mathematically, the directivity
(dimensionless) can be written as

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20

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Where Pt is the total radiated power in W and U is the radiation intensity in W/unit solid
angle.

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21

Chapter 3
ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
3.1

Overview

It is desired that the maximum gain of 3.5 dB would be achieved and the bandwidth of
the antenna would be between 3.6 GHz to 9.0 GHz. It would be used for both ISM band
and Ultra-wide band applications and micro-strip structure could be suitable for wearable
applications.

3.2

Construction of wearable antennas

After choosing the textile material to design an antenna, their assemblage in the antenna
is also crucial and specific, as they are very deformable materials. Thus, the conformation
of the conductive path with the dielectric substrate is critical. Many authors have been
improving the manufacturing processes to construct textile antennas and some guidelines
can be summarized as the geometrical dimensions of the patch should remain stable
while connecting to the dielectric substrate as the mechanical stabilization of both
materials as essentials to preserve the desire antenna characteristics. The microstrip patch
antennas developed by Hertleer et al. an alteration of no more than 0.5mm on the length
or the width of the patch influenced the performance of the antenna by causing a slight
shift of the antenna characteristics. For this reason, woven fabrics, being more stable, are
preferred to make the patches. however, the antenna geometrical stability can be achieved
if at least one component is less deformable for example, bonding using an adhesive

22

CHAPTER 3 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

sheet width a deformable patch, such as a conductive knit, with a less deformable
substrate, such a woven dielectric, results in a stable frame. The techniques used to
connect the various layers must not affect the electrical properties of the patch, such as its
surface resistivity, or the properties of the substrate. Connections using adhesive sheets or
conductive fabrics with a thermal adhesive face have shown good results indeed, the
adhesive remains at the interface of the materials and therefore the surface resistance of
the patch and the relative permittivity of the substrate are not significantly changed.
However, in the authors show that the adhesive layer introduces extra losses in the
substrate. This process of attachment of the superposed layers is very simple to perform
by a simple ironing operation. However, attention should be made to the ironing process,
in special if the patch is made of a fabric with metallic components. Indeed, the oxidation
of the metallic component, due to the hot moistening of the fabric, may increase the
surface resistance of the fabric and so decrease the efficiency of the textile antenna
Connection with seams is an alternative technique but it presents some difficulties.
Firstly, the seam must be plane, without wrinkling, what might be difficult to achieve
with deformable materials. Secondly, the stitch passes through all materials: the patch,
then the substrate and further the ground plane of the antenna, which may cause electrical
shorts between them. In Locheret al. report that the sewing needle has pulled conductive
fibers from the patch through the substrate, shorting the patch with the ground plane.
Another technique is connecting with liquid adhesives. However, it is difficult to apply a
thin layer of glue. This difficulty introduces heterogeneity and in the zones where there
are accumulations the glue may play the role of insulator between the conductive yarns of
the patch. Furthermore, these adhesives are usually stiff and brittle, and so they cannot be

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23

CHAPTER 3 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

applied in an area-wide manner on textiles as they will interfere in their flexibility. In
order to obtain a uniform thickness of the attachment of the several layers, Tronquo et al.
perform an additional stitch, in addition to the glue. In a smooth fabric was added to both
faces of the substrate to optimize the attachment of the conductive components. The
positioning of the textile components must consider the differences between right and
back faces, in terms of roughness and of density of conductive elements. In a satin 5
woven was tested in a Microstrip resonator, placing it in two positions with the right face
against the dielectric substrate and with the back face, the conductive one, against the
dielectric substrate. It was observed that when the conductive face is placed on the top of
the substrate and so underneath the nonconductive yarns of the nonconductive face, most
of the electrical field is contained in the substrate. Thus, the dielectric loss in the
nonconductive yarns is minimized. The core of the antenna may be obtained by stacking
low-loss fabrics adjusting this way the desired thickness of the substrate.

The

connections at the antenna terminals may also be critical as in wearable and flexible
antennas these connections have to be mechanically robust. In general, textile fabrics
cannot be directly soldered to (an exception is Flectron that already showed good
resistance to soldering. Therefore conductive epoxy has been used, but some concerns
remain as this connection is not very assistant.

3.3

Final Design

The final design of the antenna is with cutting in the patch and in a circular ground but a
micro-strip line is of zigzag type here. The designs and results are given below:

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CHAPTER 3 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

Figure 6: Antenna design

Figure 7: Final result

Note: Now to achieve the above result we design the substrate and radiating materials
through the following process.

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25

CHAPTER 3 ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

3.4

Substrate

The substrate of the proposed wearable textile antenna is made up of jeans with a
dimension of 30mm30mm, relative permittivity(r) of 1.7 and overall thickness of 1mm.

Figure 8: Substrate
The substrate of the antenna should flexible so that it can be adopted in any shape like
bending, sitting, standing etc.

3.5

Radiating element

Radiating element and semi-circle ground plane with a micro-strip line is made of copper.
The micro-strip line is used to feed radiating element having zigzag shape to reduce total
size of antenna.

Figure 9: Radiating material

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26

Chapter 4
SIMULATION AND RESULTS
4.1

Simulation in HFSS

Simulation is the discipline of designing a model of an actual or theoretical physical

system, executing the model on a digital computer, and analyzing the execution output.
The wearable textile antenna is simulated in HFSS (An-soft High Frequency Structure
simulator) for practice purposes.

4.2

System requirements for HFSS

4.2.1

Minimum System Requirements:

Supported processors: AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T
support, Intel Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T support Hard Drive Space (for HFSS
software): 200 MB RAM: 2 MB

4.2.2

Recommended Minimum Configuration (for Optimal Performance)

Supported processors: AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T
support, Intel Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T support Video card: 128-bit SVGA or PCI
Express video card Hard Drive Space (for HFSS software and temporary files): 700 MB
RAM: 8 GB

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CHAPTER 4 SIMULATION AND RESULTS

4.3

Antenna geometry

Antenna geometry is shown in the figure below.

Antenna dimension

Size (mm)

Radius of circular radiating element

10

Substrate

30x30

Semicircular ground plan

15

Overall thickness

Figure 4
Table 1: Geometry of antenna

4.4

Antenna design

Figure 10: Detailed design

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28

CHAPTER 4 SIMULATION AND RESULTS

The variation of frequencies versus gain and efficiency simulated results of the copper
conducting sheet UWB antenna design.

Frequency [GHz]

Gain [dB]

2.6

2.1

2.8

3.6

Efficiency [%]

85

95

90

94

Table 2: Gain and frequency

4.5

Results

4.5.1

VSWR

The SWR is usually thought of in terms of the maximum and minimum AC voltages
along the transmission line, thus called the voltage standing wave ratio or VSWR.

Figure 11: VSWR

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CHAPTER 4 SIMULATION AND RESULTS

We obtained the following graph in HFSS simulation.

Figure 12: VSWR result

The Fig (4.2 shows the VSWR, the value we get from this is 1.10 at 6 GHz which is very
valuable. The value of VSWR should not exceed 2.
4.5.2

Return loss

Return loss is the loss of power in the signal returned/reflected by a discontinuity in a

transmission line.

Figure 13: Return loss

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30

CHAPTER 4 SIMULATION AND RESULTS

This figure shows the return loss VS bandwidth of the designed antenna, as the band of
our antenna is from 3.6 to 9.0GHz. The return loss at these 2 points is -9.8832dBand 9.9106dB respectively. Our antenna input frequency is 6 GHz, thats why we are going to
measure our results on 6 GHz, and return loss investigated is -26.23 dB at 6 GHz.
4.5.3

Radiation pattern

Figure 14: 2D radiation pattern

Radiation pattern is graphical representation of radiation of electromagnetic energy as a
function of space coordinates. As name suggests, radiation pattern actually tells us about
the behavior of propagation of energy in some particular direction.

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31

CHAPTER 4 SIMULATION AND RESULTS

4.5.4

Efficiency

Figure 15: Efficiency

Fig (4.5) shows the 3D pattern of the radiation efficiency of the Textile Array Antenna is
3.50 dB. The radiation intensity at the red portion will be maximum. The different colors
show the intensity of radiation in different directions.

4.5 Overall result

As it is pretty obvious from the above figures and table that the maximum gain of 3.6 dB
is achieved and the bandwidth of the antenna is between 3.6 GHz to 9 GHz. It can be
used for both ISM band and Ultra-wide band applications and micro-strip structure is
suitable for wearable applications.

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32

CHAPTER 4 SIMULATION AND RESULTS

Frequency [GHz]

Gain [dB]

2.6

2.1

2.8

3.6

Efficiency [%]

85

95

90

94

Table 3: Gain
VSWR is less than 2.0 which is very valuable because VSWR should be less than 2 for
an antenna. And return loss is -25dB which should be less than -10dB.

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33

Chapter 5
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
5.1

About Antenna

Here the wearable textile antenna is presented which fulfill many aspects of mining,
diving, hiking and medicals well as other sorts of military and security actions. Such
antennas are worthy preferred by human beings because it covers about all the basic
requirements.
This wearable textile antenna is Omni directional so it can communicate in any direction.
Now-a-days the wireless networks are highly necessary and for this purpose the wearable
textile antenna is designed which is also wirelessly communicated system.

5.2

Future work

In future we will try to expand our research further. Due to miniaturization trend in
technology, textiles antennas are gaining more attention. In future smaller textile
washable antennas will be used widely in different fields. In health related technologies
textiles antennas are playing very important role. They may be used in medical science as
a useful device. Shortly, wearable textile antenna is a future technology.

34

REFERENCES
[1] Nekoogar, F. (2005). Ultra-wideband communications: fundamentals and
applications. Prentice Hall Press.
[2] Design and Synthesis of Non Uniform High Impedance Surface based Wearable
[3] Antenna.By Shahidbasher.
[4] Wireless communications Principles and Practices by Rappaport.
[5] Wireless Communications by Dr. Goldsmith.
[6] Antennas - From Theory to Practice by Yi Huang and Kevin Boyle.
[7] Compact UWB wearable button antenna by Sanz-Izquierdo and M. I. Sobhy
[8] Development of textile antennas for body wearable applications and
investigations on their performance under bent conditions by Sankaralingam, S.
and B. Gupta.
[9] Bonfiglio, A.; De Rossi, D. Wearable Monitoring Systems, 1st ed.; Springer:
Locher, I.; Klemm, M.; Kirstein, T.; Trster, G. Design and Characterization of
Wearable antennas.

LINKS
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pattern
2. http://www.antenna-theory.com/basics/radPattern.html
3.http://www.antenna-theory.com/
4.http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Antennas/
5. http://www.ets-lindgren.com/3303
6. http://www.multispectral.com/history.html

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