Paired Snap-On Buttons Connections for Balanced Antennas in Wearable Systems

A pair of commercial snap-on buttons is demonstrated as a detachable radio frequency (RF) balanced connection between a garment-integrated textile dipole antenna and a passive sensor-enabled radio frequency identification (RFID) tag in a wearable wireless system. This arrangement offers reliable, low-cost, and easily detachable RF coupling and feeding connections for balanced antennas, as conceptualized in simulations and validated through measurements. In addition, a back-to-back balanced transmission-line structure has been designed and measured to characterize the RF performance of the proposed snap-on button connection. The resulting S-parameters indicate the good performance of the snap-on buttons as RF connectors for balanced antennas/transmission lines at least up to 5 GHz with insertion loss better than 0.8 dB.