Off-body Communication for Protective Clothing

Because of the emerging research into wearable textile systems, functionality of personal protective clothing is increasingly enhanced. High performance fabrics protect the wearer from extreme environmental conditions, whereas monitoring systems provide information about his physical and surrounding conditions during emergency activities. To transfer the collected data from the sensors as part of the wearable system to an external nearby base station, a wireless communication device is required in the garment. In order to allow maximum integration of this antenna into the clothing, flexible textile antennas are introduced. In this work, a foam-based antenna for integration into a protective outer garment is developed and tested.