Antennas and antenna-electronics interfaces made of conductive yarn and paint for cost-effective wearable RFIDs and sensors

We characterize textile antennas and antenna-electronics interconnections created by depositing conductive paint and by embroidering with conductive yarn. Both approaches are based on affordable materials and enable single-step manufacturing of RFID tag on textiles. To achieve further material savings, our dipole antennas comprise of line-type structures instead of the commonly used metallized surfaces. To understand the electromagnetic properties of the antennas and to assess the quality of the conductors, both wireless measurements and electromagnetic field simulations were used. Overall, the tags made of the conductive yarn by embroidering were detectable at the distances of 5-to-6 meters in air and at 2 meters on the human body. Conductive paint yielded the corresponding distances of 3.5-to-4 meters and 1 meter, respectively.