A Compact and Flexible Dipole Antenna to be Integrated into Military Berets

A compact dipole antenna designed to be integrated into a soldier's beret is discussed in this paper. The antenna is designed to be operated at the UHF RFID frequency of 866 MHz. Performance in terms of reflection coefficient and realized gain of the compact dipole antenna is reported. Later, an AMC structure is designed on the same flexible fabric to block the downward radiation and the performance of this structure in terms of the reflection phase is reported. The proposed solution is a flexible antenna; it can easily be integrated into a soldier's beret for tracking purposes.