A novel Bluetooth antenna on flexible substrate for smart clothing

The development of wearable computer systems and smart clothing has been rapid. They are becoming more and more lightweight and soon we should see a wide range of unobtrusive wearable and ubiquitous computing equipment integrated into everyday wear. Rapid progress in wireless communication promises to replace wired-communication networks, in which antennas play a more important role. This paper presents an antenna design for wearable applications. Due to wearable system demands this paper discusses mainly physically small planar antennas. A design example is given in which a flexible PIFA (FlexPIFA) structure for single and dual-band operation is introduced into smart clothing in Bluetooth and UMTS fields. To our knowledge this is first time a thin and flexible antenna has been designed for commercial smart clothing. Measured results are compared with simulations and good agreement was observed. In addition the effect of the human body on antenna performance is discussed.