Textile Wearable Antenna Design: A review - NADITEC'22

Abstract
The needs in healthcare, sports, communications, military, and internet of things (IoT) has become essential in the design of a wearable antenna because of cost, lightweight, small size, low maintenance and energy consumption. The use of textile in wearable antennas requires the characterization of their properties to refer to applications. Textile fabric is mostly used as antenna substrates, but there are some concerns about limitations of permittivity and tangent loss, the antenna’s performance while bending position, human contact such as a coupling effect, the suitability of the material for human skin and the electromagnetic properties on textiles, need to be further studies. Generally, textile have low dielectric constant, therefore it must be combined with conductor material like cooper to improve antenna gain, bandwidth and high efficiency. Cotton, yarn, condura, nylon and silk were the mostly used in the wearable antenna design and fabrication. More research needs to be done to find the best textile material which have quick drying ability when wet an absorb moisture. This paper aims to review and discuss these issues through literature and previous studies of the design and development of textile antenna regarding of the limitation. The findings help to recognize the limitations and advantages of this technology.