Design of a textile ultra-wideband antenna with stable performance for body-centric wireless communications

The study proposes a flexible ultra-wideband (UWB) textile antenna for body-centric wireless system. The antenna consists of a circle-shaped radiator, a tapered microstrip-fed line and a ground plane with a rectangular slot. For body-centric applications, a cloth with 100% cotton is used as the substrate in the design of the antenna. To emulate the on-body condition, the antenna is studied when it is bent and crumpled, and when the feed line and ground plane are misaligned because of human body movement. The antenna is studied using computer simulation, and is also prototyped and measured for verification of simulation results. The feeding cable used in measurement affects the measured results, which is also studied. Simulated and measured results agree very well. Results show that the flexible UWB textile antenna has good performance in terms of bandwidth, realised gain, efficiency and radiation patterns, making it a good candidate for body-centric wireless communications.