A Shoelace Antenna for the Application of Collision Avoidance for the Blind Person

A shoelace antenna for the application of collision avoidance for the blind person is proposed for the first time. A thin flexible metal wire is used to fabricate the antenna, which can run along with the shoelace without destroying the shoe or adding extra big structures. According to the investigations, to put the feeding probe at the bottom of the cross point is better than the locations around the string bowknot. To make the shoelace tighter or looser will influence the performance with an affordable variation. The effect of the biological tissues has been taken into account during the performance evaluation of the antenna. The measured fractional bandwidth is 11% with a resonance of 2.43 GHz in the ISM Band. The main lobe of the antenna points to the upper front direction with an angle of about 20°, which is suitable for the detecting of the anterior obstacles when walking. The measured results indicate reasonable performance for the shoelace antenna to serve as a tool for the blind person.