Design and synthesis of non-uniform high impedance surface-based wearable antennas

This thesis is concerned with the design and fabrication of flexible textile wearable antennas integrated with the newly introduced artificial materials known as high impedance surfaces (HIS). With the rapid growth and use of wireless communication systems more and more people are taking advantage of portable computing systems on daily basis. Also with the advancement in electronic industry new and sophisticated wireless devices have been introduced which are being used closed to human body. For user convenience there is an increasing need for integrating antennas on or in the clothing. The conventional antennas being rigid and obtrusive to user movements have limitations. There is a need of antennas made of flexible textile materials that can be part of user clothing defined as wearable antennas. Also with the miniaturisation trend in electronic industry, antenna designers are facing a challenge to come up with a compact, low profile,multi function efficient antenna designs occupying a small physical space. By integrating antennas in user clothing this limited space problem can also be resolved. With the easy availability of electro textile materials it is now possible to manufacture complete fabric antennas. The entire design cycle of wearable fabric antennas starting from material selection to prototype fabrication and antenna testing was carried out in this thesis. A novel technique for antenna fabrication using electro textile material is proposed that will have major implications on wearable computing industry. The use of HIS for antenna performance enhancement is growing at a rapid pace. In this thesis a modified wearable form of HIS defined as non uniform HIS is presented and successfully integrated with antenna for improved performance under low profile limitation. The HIS was also integrated with normal patch antenna to reduce its size and improve its gain and impedance bandwidth. These wearable antennas were then tested under real operating conditions. The measured results validated the design idea and showed that there are many possibilities for these unique artificial materials to be exploited for future wearable on body communication antennas.