Miniaturization of wearable electro-textile antennas using Minkowski fractal geometry

This paper deals with miniaturization of wearable electro-textile antennas by the use of Minkowski fractal geometries. Two electro-textile materials namely Flectron and Zelt are considered for the design of flexible microstrip antennas. In both cases, polyester fabric material has been employed as dielectric medium. In the basic design both the antennas are designed for WLAN applications. The Flectron antenna provides a gain of 6.54 dB with an impedance bandwidth of 132 MHz whereas, the Zelt antenna offers a gain of 7.4 dB and an impedance bandwidth of 104 MHz. By applying Minkowski fractal geometry to the antennas, miniaturization is achieved. In its first iteration, antenna designs are optimized and tuned to WiBro band and in the second iteration, antennas are further miniaturized in order to make them suitable for GSM 1900 applications. In these two bands, the gain and efficiency of both Flectron and Zelt antennas conform to their respective wireless standards. The simulation studies reveal that Zelt antenna yields better results compared to Flectron antenna.