Flexible Wearable Antenna for Employee Health and Environmental Safety Monitoring in Smart Factories

Industry 4.0 is one of the topics that has attracted much attention in recent years. Governments around the world have been actively promoting it to enhance their competitiveness. The core of Industry 4.0 is the concept of smart factories. The interconnection between different devices enables factories to operate more efficiently. In this paper, we attempt to further introduce the ability to monitor employee health and environmental safety under the framework of smart factories. Through the use of wireless transmission technology, employees' vital signs and environmental safety information can be tracked in real time. Since the quality of antennas used for wireless communications is crucial, we designed dedicated wearable antennas to meet this demand. We utilized polyimide (PI) films to fabricate highly flexible metallized soft boards, and employed electromagnetic simulation analysis to design microwave wave antennas. Finally, we integrated and tested the proposed wearable antenna for health and environmental safety monitoring applications.