E-fiber electronics for body-worn devices

This paper presents novel body-worn antennas fabricated using embroidered conductive fibers (E-fibers). The E-fiber antennas were precisely fabricated onto regular fabrics and clothing using automated embroidering. These E-fiber antennas offer desirable conformality and flexibility, without undermining electrical performance for body-worn radio frequencies (RF) applications. In this study, we fabricated an embroidered asymmetric meandered flare dipole antenna on a scarf. Its RF performance was found comparable to conventional printed antennas. This new technology of embroidered E-fiber antennas can also be applied onto daily garments or accessories for wideband and high-data-rate communications.