• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1071-1076
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• 2009

A wearable embroidery 'ㅂ' character shape UHF RFID tag antenna has been designed using conductive electro-thread. After testing characteristics of various electro-threads, the embroidery tag, with a T-matching structure, has been designed on a cloth with 200D(denier) electro-thread which performs electrically better. The embroidery tag on a piece of fabric or clothes made with the flexible electro-thread is a wearable tag and possible to be recognized by an RFID system. The conductivity of different deniers of electro-threads has been measured. The measured conductivity has been used for simulation and fabrication to have accurate simulation results. To verify the characteristics of the tag antenna, the return loss and reading range of the fabricated embroidery electro-thread UHF RFID tag antenna have been tested. The reading range is approximately 1.52 m.

• Journal of Convergence Society for SMB
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.27-32
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• 2013

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) have been made possible by the emergence of small and lightweight wireless systems such as Bluetooth, enabled devices and PDAs. Antennas are an essential part of any WBAN system and due to various technical requirements and physical constraints, careful consideration of their design and deployment is needed. This paper is proposing on the design of wearable antenna as parts of clothing to serve communications functions, such as tracking and navigation in health care applications. The substrates of the wearable antennas will be made from textile materials and since it is wearable, it should have a small size, be light weight, low maintenance, and unobtrusive. This proposed paper will also investigate the influence of different parameters for wearable antenna including types of textile/substrate to ensure that the antenna design satisfies WBAN requirements. The characteristics and behavior of the antenna need to adhere to specifications set by wireless standards and system technology requirements. This means that the transmitting and receiving frequency bands of the various units need to be chosen accordingly. Since there are restrictions on the level of power to which the human body can be exposed to, the antenna as well as other RF system components must be designed to meet these restrictions. Antenna gain, which directly affects power transmitted, is a critical parameter in ensuring power levels fall within the safety guidelines and so will be of primary importance in the design. The electromagnetic interaction between WBAN antennas and devices and the human body will also be explored.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.607-612
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• 2021

This paper presents a novel CPW-fed UWB monopole paper antenna made by paper and copper tape. Through the simulation, the optimized antenna design parameters were obtained, and an antenna having an omni-directional radiation pattern and a gain of 2.2 dBi or more in the UWB frequency band of 3.1-10.6 GHz was designed. The antenna was manufactured using general A4 paper and copper tape, and the measurement result satisfies the return loss of -10dB or less in the UWB frequency band and confirm that the return loss characteristic was maintained even when the antenna plane was bent by 3 mm in the longitudinal direction. The proposed antenna is a wearable device that can provide services in the UWB band, and can be manufactured inexpensively by printing it with a conductive print on paper. So it can be used as a wearable antenna for UWB communication in various application fields such as logistics and disposable terminals.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2012

This paper proposes a reconfigurable beam-steering antenna using a bended dipole and a loop. The radiation patterns of the two antennas are cancelled or compensated, and headed towards a specific direction when the dipole and loop antenna are combined at a reasonable ratio. The proposed antenna can steer the beam directions by controlling the operation of two artificial switches. The proposed antenna was manufactured on a PCB (FR-4) and a flexible PCB (polyimide). In the case of the antenna that was fabricated on a PCB, the maximum beam directions were $+50^{\circ}$, $0^{\circ}$, and $-50^{\circ}$ in the azimuth direction using the two artificial switches, and the antenna gain was 1.96 dBi to 2.48 dBi in the operation bandwidth of 2.47 GHz to 2.53 GHz. Also, the antenna was fabricated on a flexible PCB and measured under various bending conditions for wearable applications.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.28-33
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• 2013

This paper proposes a miniaturized high-isolation diversity antenna for wearable wireless body area network (WBAN) applications. An inverted-F type radiating element is used to reduce the overall dimension of the proposed antenna to $30mm{\times}30mm{\times}2.5mm$. The antenna performance on the human body phantom is analyzed through simulation and the performance of the fabricated antenna is verified by comparing the measured data with that of the simulation when the antenna is placed on a semi-solid flat phantom with equivalent electrical properties of a human body. The fabricated antenna has a 10 dB return loss bandwidth over the Industrial Scientific Medical (ISM) band from 2.35 GHz to 2.71 GHz and isolation is higher than 28 dB at 2.45 GHz. The measured peak gain of antenna elements # 1 and # 2 is -0.43 dBi and -0.54 dBi, respectively. Performance parameters are analyzed, including envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), mean effective gain (MEG), and the MEG ratio. In addition, the specific absorption ratio (SAR) distributions of the proposed antenna are measured for consideration in use.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.7
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• pp.642-646
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• 2016

A wearable antenna made using conductive tape on paper is presented in this paper. The proposed antenna is composed of a half-wavelength conducting dipole strip and a parasitic conducting strip on the A4 copy paper. The antenna is fed at the center of the dipole strip by an SMA connector. The configuration of the proposed antenna changes according to the origami method. Therefore the radiation patterns of the antenna vary according to whether or not the paper is folded. This approach solves the problem that the reception ratio of the signal decreases because of null points in the antenna radiation pattern. The reflection coefficient and the radiation pattern of the proposed antenna at 900 MHz are evaluated using an EM simulation and measurements. It was shown that the proposed paper antenna has reconfigurable characteristics at 900 MHz when utilizing the origami method.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.754-760
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• 2011

Reconfigurable beam steering using microstrippatch antenna with U-slot is proposed for wearable fabric applications. The proposed antenna is manufactured on a fabric substrate, and designed to steer the beam directions at the operation frequency of 6.0 GHz. The U-shaped slot and the indirect feeding-techniques are utilized in designing the proposed antenna. By the configuration of two artificial switches($S_0$, $S_1$, $S_2$) in between the indirect feed and the antenna patch, the antenna has three beam directions. The maximum beam directions are steerable in the yz-plane(${\theta}=0^{\circ}$, $30^{\circ}$, $331^{\circ}$), and the overall HPBW is $115^{\circ}$. The measured peak gains are 6.11~6.69 dBi.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1114-1120
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• 2009

The conductivity of various electro-threads is analyzed, and the washable electro-thread embroidery UHF RFID tag antennas using the character shape without T-matching structure are designed by adding a T-matching structure. The RFID tag antenna using the electro-thread is easy to be embedded on a cloth as a wearable antenna because it is flexible and different from general copper inlay shape and tape type tag. The embroidery tag antennas are designed with the English alphabet 'F' and the Korea alphabet 'ㄹ' character. Those are easy to be applied to general clothes. The parameters of antennas are optimized and fabricated. The characteristics and the reading range patterns of the tag antennas are measured. The reading ranges of wet tags(tap water, sea water and soapy water) are tested and compared.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.7
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• pp.4842-4848
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• 2015

This paper presents a comparison of communication performance between the reconfigurable beam-steering antenna and the omni-directional (loop) antenna during standstill and walking motion. Both omni-directional and reconfigurable antennas were manufactured on the same fabric (${\varepsilon}_r=1.35$, $tqn{\delta}=0.02$) substrate and operated around 5 GHz band. The reconfigurable antenna was designed to steer the beam directions. To implement the beam-steering capability, the antenna used two PIN diodes. The measured peak gains were 5.9-6.6 dBi and the overall half power beam width (HPBW) was $102^{\circ}$. In order to compare the communication efficiency, both the bit error rate (BER) and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were measured using a GNU Radio Companion software tool and user software radio peripheral (USRP) devices. The measurement were performed when both antennas were standstill and walking motion in an antenna chamber as well as in a smart home environment. From these results, the performances of the reconfigurable beam steering antenna outperformed that of the loop antenna. In addition, in terms of communication efficiencies, in an antenna chamber was better than in a smart home environment. In terms of movement of antennas, standstill state has better results than walking motion state.

• Textile Coloration and Finishing
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.287-291
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• 2013

Nowadays, terms such as 'Smart Textile', 'Intelligent Textile' and 'Wearable Computing' are commonly used in everyday contexts. And radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data from a tag attached to an object, for the purposes of automatic identification and tracking. These products are required technologies which are textile treatments, printing, ink, etc. Durability of textile substrates is an essential marker for conductive ink printing process. Especially, heat stability is important, since conductive ink should be processable (annealing, curing) at temperatures below $150^{\circ}C$. This study was application of RFID on textiles. The textile pre-treatment processes should be carried out to use RFID antenna on textiles.