Characteristics Measurement of Wearable Embroidered Disc-Shaped Textile Array Antenna

In the fast growing of wearable devices, textile-based antennas play a critical role in achieving reliable wireless and mobile communications. This paper deals with an experimental approach for measuring the radiation characteristics of a wearable embroidered disc-shaped textile array antenna which is designed based on microstrip technology and realized using cotton-fabric. The proposed array antenna utilizes cotton-fabric as the host substrate and copper wires embroidered manually to form a four-element disc-shaped array. Five square layers of cotton-fabric with the thickness of 0.2 mm each are used to construct the array antenna. The measured characteristics yield a wideband frequency response of 2.52 GHz from the frequency of 2.76 GHz to 5.28 GHz with the lowest reflection coefficient value of -29.92 dB at the frequency of 3.42 GHz. In addition, the measured radiation patterns demonstrate unidirectional types, which are similar to that of a typical microstrip patch array antenna.