Bending impact on a flexible ultra-wideband conductive polymer antenna

This paper presents a numerical and experimental study of the impact of bending on the characteristics of a flexible ultra-wide band (UWB) conductive polymer antenna. The antenna under investigation is highly flexible and designed for high radiation efficiency. It consists of a planar structure made entirely of non-metallic materials including a thin PEDOT polymer sheet as conducting materials and sticky tape as substrate. Importantly for a flexible antenna, possible performance degradations in various bending conditions need to be investigated, including variations in matching and radiation characteristics. The results indicate that the antenna still performs well in terms of impedance matching even with considerable bending angles whereas degradation due to bending has to be taken into account for polarization.