Effects of Textile Weaving and Finishing Processes on Textile-Based Wearable Patch Antennas

In this paper, we analyze the effects of textile weaving and finishing processes on the performance of textile-based wearable antennas. Several textile-based patch antennas operating at 2.4 GHz were designed and fabricated for evaluation. All of them had the same geometry comprising a 1-mm-thick felt substrate in the middle, and silver ink screen-printed polyester fabric as the ground and patch at the bottom and on top. However, polyester fabric, the bare textile material for the conductive ground and patch was subjected to different weaving and finishing (tentering, scouring, and calendering) processes. It was observed that the antenna resonant frequency, bandwidth, radiation efficiency, and peak gain were varied by these processes, although the antenna geometry and screen-printing method were identical to each other. The best antenna exhibits a peak gain of 5.2 dBi and a radiation efficiency of 42.4%, while the worst shows corresponding values of 4.17 dBi and 34.8%. This implies that the weaving and finishing processes considerably impact textile-based wearable antenna performances.