Design and Realization of Wearable Textile Slotted Waveguide Antennas

Abstract

The design of wearable antennas presents a challenge from multiple perspectives, as they must meet technical requirements and satisfy safety standards while also being suitable for integration into clothing and aesthetically pleasing. In recent years, the development of conductive fabrics has, in many ways, allowed for significant progress in the manufacturing of wearable antennas, and in previous work, we developed textile slotted waveguide antennas using conductive textiles and traditional sewing processes. However, various aspects of the design and realization of such antennas remain challenging. In particular, this work investigates the issue of using foam-based molds, which enables the realization of thin, flexible, wearable antennas, as well as the issue of antenna feed, specifically the transition from a classic coaxial transmission line to a waveguide. The design of the transition was focused on simplicity and robustness, due to which we limited the number of degrees of freedom in the design process in order to achieve a structure suitable for mounting on textile waveguide antennas. In addition, the antenna design procedure and the body-channel model were considered in order to optimize the performance of the antennas and the wireless body-centric system itself. Several prototypes of different kinds were developed in the 5.8 GHz ISM band, confirming the feasibility of the proposed concepts through experimental results.