Emissive Properties of Wearable Wireless-Communicating Textiles Made From Multimaterial Fibers

This paper presents the emissive properties of wearable wireless-communicating textiles made from multimaterial fibers for network applications at 2.4 GHz frequency. Tests conducted on these textiles have shown that, for on-body and off-body scenarios, the emissive properties in terms of return loss (S
₁₁
), radiation pattern, efficiency (gain), and bit-error rate (BER) adequately address short-range wireless communications applications at Mbps data-rate scales. The wireless-communicating textiles were fabricated by integrating polymer-glass-metal fiber composites into textile hosts using conventional weaving process. This multimaterial fiber approach provided good radio-frequency (RF) emissive properties in compliance with safety regulations while preserving the mechanical and cosmetic properties of the garments. These results demonstrate that multimaterial fiber textiles could be designed for short-range wireless network applications addressing the IEEE 802.11b/g/n and IEEE 802.15.4 standards at 2.4 GHz frequency.