Antennas Manufactured from Conductive Fabric Materials

This chapter studies Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) new technologies and their applications in human clothes and digital life. First, we study embroidered textile antennas, manufactured from conductive fibrous materials, for wireless identification and sensing applications. We compare the properties and characteristics of various conductive textiles and demonstrate antenna-embroidery methods based on conductive yarns and textile substrates. Design considerations for embroidered antennas, including parasitic effects, resistance of conductive yarns and deformation sensitivity of different geometries, are analyzed with examples. We further measure the Radio Frequency (RF) performance of embroidered textile antennas in various design cases. Embroidered RFID or Near Field Communication (NFC) antennas can also be used as sensing devices through the exploitation of antenna-sensing techniques (a.k.a. antenna impedance modulation). Several fabric-based wearable sensor applications including human-body movement tracking, vital sign monitoring and human–computer interaction are demonstrated. Then, we introduce the design processing and functional simulation of antennas for smart bookshelf. This chapter can be utilized as guidelines for the design and fabrication of embroidered electronic textile (e-textile) devices and for the design Internet of Things (IOT) application for digital library.