Dual-Polarized Armband Embroidered Textile Antenna for On-/Off-Body Wearable Applications

In this paper, a dual-polarized armband textile antenna based on an embroidery technique is proposed for wearable applications. The antenna consists of four series-fed patch antennas wrapped around a cylindrical surface. Different from traditional wearable antennas, a quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern is achieved by exciting the four radiators with uniform amplitude and phase. The other important contribution of this work is that dual orthogonal polarizations are realized in the design, which can significantly improve the link reliability due to antenna deformation and body movement. Moreover, owing to the high front-to-back ratio (FBR) of patch antenna elements, the antenna exhibits a low Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), which is highly desirable for wearable applications. A prototype of the armband antenna was fabricated and tested, confirming the numerical predictions.