Overcoming the efficiency barrier of textile antennas: a transmission lines approach
Overcoming the efficiency barrier of textile antennas: a transmission lines approach
Designing high-efficiency antennas on textiles is fundamental to developing wirelessly-connected smart garments. Furthermore, large antenna arrays could be used to receive or harvest directional and ambient radio-frequency (RF) power from the environment enabling battery-free e-textiles. The key challenges hindering the realisation of high efficiency antennas lie in the dielectric properties of fabrics, the conductivity of the traces and the low textile thickness. This work numerically and experimentally analyses different RF transmission line structures to establish the limitations of widely utilised antenna designs, such as the microstrip patch, and proposes alternative wearable antenna design based on coplanar waveguide (CPW) structures. It is demonstrated that using a CPW, insertion losses in a 20 mm line can be minimized by up to 40% for the same substrate, compared to a microstrip, at 30 GHz. A CPW monopole antenna is demonstrated with more than 80% efficiency on a lossy, thin, poly-cotton substrate. Moreover, it is shown that the efficiency of the CPW monopole is independent of the substrate’s thickness and type of fabric.
1-5
Wagih, Mahmoud
7e7b16ba-0c64-4f95-bd3c-99064055f693
Weddell, Alex S.
3d8c4d63-19b1-4072-a779-84d487fd6f03
Beeby, Steve
ba565001-2812-4300-89f1-fe5a437ecb0d
11 December 2019
Wagih, Mahmoud
7e7b16ba-0c64-4f95-bd3c-99064055f693
Weddell, Alex S.
3d8c4d63-19b1-4072-a779-84d487fd6f03
Beeby, Steve
ba565001-2812-4300-89f1-fe5a437ecb0d
Wagih, Mahmoud, Weddell, Alex S. and Beeby, Steve
(2019)
Overcoming the efficiency barrier of textile antennas: a transmission lines approach.
Proceedings, 32 (1), .
(doi:10.3390/proceedings2019032018).
Abstract
Designing high-efficiency antennas on textiles is fundamental to developing wirelessly-connected smart garments. Furthermore, large antenna arrays could be used to receive or harvest directional and ambient radio-frequency (RF) power from the environment enabling battery-free e-textiles. The key challenges hindering the realisation of high efficiency antennas lie in the dielectric properties of fabrics, the conductivity of the traces and the low textile thickness. This work numerically and experimentally analyses different RF transmission line structures to establish the limitations of widely utilised antenna designs, such as the microstrip patch, and proposes alternative wearable antenna design based on coplanar waveguide (CPW) structures. It is demonstrated that using a CPW, insertion losses in a 20 mm line can be minimized by up to 40% for the same substrate, compared to a microstrip, at 30 GHz. A CPW monopole antenna is demonstrated with more than 80% efficiency on a lossy, thin, poly-cotton substrate. Moreover, it is shown that the efficiency of the CPW monopole is independent of the substrate’s thickness and type of fabric.
Text
Overcoming the efficiency barrier
- Version of Record
More information
e-pub ahead of print date: 12 November 2019
Published date: 11 December 2019
Venue - Dates:
International Conference on the Challenges, Opportunities, Innovations and Applications in Electronic Textiles (E-TEXTILES 2019), , London, United Kingdom, 2019-11-12 - 2019-11-12
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 435224
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/435224
ISSN: 2504-3900
PURE UUID: 86fe8d31-a33b-405a-b8e0-aa9a242ef1df
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 28 Oct 2019 17:30
Last modified: 19 Apr 2024 17:27
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Mahmoud Wagih
Author:
Alex S. Weddell
Author:
Steve Beeby
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics