Three-Dimensional Textile Structural Conical Conformal Microstrip Antennas for Multifunctional Flexible Electronics

Textile structural antennas are critical components in case of modern wireless communication devices for wearable electronics and multifunctional structures. During the practical applications, deformation of the fabric-based antenna is unavoidable, which may deteriorate antenna performance. Herein, to specially design the flexible antenna, which can adapt to various conformal structures, a three-dimensional orthogonal woven microstrip antenna (3DOW-MA) was fabricated by weaving the conductive and dielectric yarns together into a compacted and uniform pattern. Due to the integrated textile structure and uniformed deformation, both the simulated and experimental results showed that the 3DOW-MAs exhibited excellent radiation performance even after being bent into various conical structures. The optimized conical conformal 3DOW-MAs revealed accurate resonant frequency, minimum energy loss, and proper gain values of 2.47 dB (single element) and 4.23 dB (double elements), which are competent for practical wireless applications. Our work demonstrated that 3DOW-MAs are promising candidates for future smart flexible systems and wireless body-area networks.