Design and Characterization of Conformal Microstrip Antennas Integrated into 3D Orthogonal Woven Fabrics

The integration of the antenna and textile materials is very important in the army protective or data transmission clothing. In this study, a novel microstrip antenna integrated into a 3D orthogonal woven fabric was successfully designed and fabricated. This type of antenna is designed to work in wearable or conformal antenna applications. Simulation work using HFSS software was done for the determination of antenna size. Antenna performance including return loss, radiation pattern and gain were measured and the simulated results were found to have good agreement with the measured results. The measured return loss was -18.32dB with a resonant frequency of 1.75GHz. The gain under the frequency of 1.70GHz reached as high as 6.47dB. These results are considered to be very valuable, and this type of integrated antenna is expected to be useful as wearable antenna in the telecommunication or smart textile antenna field.