Design and simulation of flexible jute antenna with performance validation on bending and soaking conditions

Recently, there has been an abrupt increase in the integration of community antenna to flexible, textile and wearable applications. The proposed work introduces the design of a flexible wearable patch antenna using a jute fiber substrate for better performance. The antenna has been designed and simulated with jute substrate at the operating frequency of 3.23 GHz. The antenna has been fabricated and tested under normal, wet, on-hand and bending conditions using a vector network analyzer. The various parameters such as reflection coefficient parameter and voltage standing wave ratio of the fabricated antenna are measured and compared with the simulation results. The tested results show that the performance of the antenna under normal, wet, on-hand and bending conditions is almost approximately equal. Due to better performance in soaking and bending conditions as well as low cost and adequate availability of jute material, the proposed antenna can be used in various applications such as biomedical, military, radio location, ground radar, search and rescue applications, and more.