Shielding Effectiveness of Multilayer Copper Coated Polyester Fabric at 2 GHz - 8 GHz Spectrum

This paper presents shielding characteristics of single as well as multilayer thin woven copper polyester fabric in the 2 GHz to 8 GHz frequency range through a free-space transmission method. Free-space characterization technique was employed to measure reflected and transmitted power scattering parameters. The measured results were incorporated into calculation of reflection and absorption losses' contribution to total shielding effectiveness (SE). SE performance for the material under test is characterized by logarithmic relation within the investigated frequency bands, where peak SE is approximately between 4 GHz until 6 GHz range. Increasing thickness by stacking multilayers of the investigated copper coated fabric was found to have minimum effects on SE. It was also observed that pure polyester textile sandwiching the copper coated fabric could improve SE. Reflection loss as opposed to absorption loss, was shown to be in declining trend from 2 GHz to 8 GHz.