Prototyping of a communicating textile

A new era is coming with intelligent materials, which are able to provide diverse functionalities to users all along the product lifecycle, during the design, manufacturing, use and dismantling phases. These materials can track their own evolution all along the Supply Chain, which lead to gather helpful information and allow information continuum at all time and everywhere (synchronization of informational and physical flows). Usually, these functionalities are fulfilled via the integration of specific electronic components into the material (wireless sensors, RFID). The present paper forms part of this framework. To go further in the interpretation of this paradigm, it proposes an approach to design this kind of communicating material and its necessary communication architecture useful to enable communication between textile and environment. Feasibility studies related to industrial processes, to usage and technology constraints are handled within the paper too. A prototype is realized in which a huge number of tags are scattered. Afterwards, the physical limits of the textile are evaluated and compared to a classic one. A digitizing tool is also introduced which allows getting dynamically the location map of tags constituting the material.