Inverted E-Shaped Wearable Textile Antenna for Medical Applications

A miniaturized textile antenna is designed and demonstrated for ISM band applications at 2.4 GHz. The proposed antenna uses appropriate loading of a rectangular slot/notch with a strip line inserted to form an inverted E-shaped antenna. The structure is simple, compact, and easy to manufacture using only fabric material. The antenna size is 75% smaller than a conventional antenna. When the antenna is subjected to bending, its performance proves sustainable under deformation. Each slot/notch and strip line is translated to its equivalent circuit and then integrated to form the whole equivalent circuit of the proposed antenna. The results from the equivalent circuits and simulation show acceptable agreement. The antenna shows an improvement of size miniaturization of 30 x 20 x 0.7 mm(3) and demonstrates an impedance bandwidth of 15% and efficiency of 79%, showing that it is a promising candidate for incorporation into wearable systems.