Basic characteristics of a textile monopole antenna for body-centric wireless communications

This paper presents a light-weight, compact and simple textile monopole antenna structure for body-centric wireless communications (BCWC), applications operating in the 2.45 GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. Three different conductive textile materials are chosen: Pure Copper Polyester Taffeta, ShieldIt Super and Nora RS. The result obtained in this investigation showed that all three textile monopoles produced higher reflection coefficient and directivity values compared to the conventional FR-4 monopole antenna. It was found that the simulated gain and radiation pattern characteristics agreed well with the conventional FR4 monopole antenna. The result has also shown that the Nora RS gave better performance in terms of return loss and gain characteristics compared to the other two electrotextiles.