Wearable high-performance meander ring dipole antenna for electronic-textile applications

A novel wearable dipole antenna at 325 MHz resonance frequency is presented in this article. A felt fabric with permittivity 1.2 and thickness 0.7 mm is used as a substrate. The proposed design is validated by comparison of 3D electromagnetic simulations and measurements. The obtained results correspond to S-11 < -18 dB and a gain 1.5 dB at resonance frequency, with 49% efficiency and a 20 MHz bandwidth. Moreover, the effect of bending of the e-textiles under realistic scenarios is also studied. The measured results show that by changing the radius of bending from 32.5 to 3 cm, the resonance frequency is shifted up 10 MHz with a sensitivity of 0.285 MHz/cm.