Printed Non-Metallic Textile-Based Carbon Antenna for Low-Cost Green Wearable Applications

Anticipated by 2035, a trillion wirelessly connected Internet of Everything (IoE) devices will be deployed in various pervasive applications. Therefore, sustainable and low-cost antennas are crucial for enabling an environmentally-friendly IoE. Furthermore, advances in carbon-based energy storage and harvesting devices motivates research in carbon-based antennas for wireless power transmission (WPT) applications. In this paper, we present the first non-metallic carbon-based microstrip patch antenna implemented on textiles for wearable applications. The antenna is fabricated on a standard felt/woven-polyester fabric substrate using stencil casting and demonstrated for S-band applications. The antenna maintains a wide 10% fractional bandwidth from 3.16 to 3.49 GHz, in agreement with the simulated bandwidth. The achieves at least 30% radiation efficiency, 10.4 dBi measured directivity, and 6.1 dBi measured gain. Based on the measured radiation properties of the patch, it is concluded that non-metallic carbon-based antennas are suitable for future wearable IoE applications.