On-body antennas: Towards wearable intelligence

Wearable antennas are paramount components of a new era of wireless body-centric sensing systems by extending the functionality of daily garments. Garment-integrated sensor networks within biomedicine and personal healthcare demand information about sensed or measured biological parameters to be reliably and quickly delivered over a wireless communication link for analysis purposes. The totally maintenance-free, conformal, low-cost and low-power wearable antennas have an enormous potential for fulfilling these requirements. They may be considered as a benchmark in personal healthcare domain, ultimately making concepts like telemedicine to become reality.