Experimental Investigations on the Effect of Textile Substrate Nanomaterial Coating on Wearable Antenna Performance

The variation in radiation characteristics of wearable antennas due to bending or folding of antenna during actual use is a major issue. The shift in resonant frequency values is most critical as it may lead to antenna operating in undesired frequency band. In this presented work, the dielectric nanomaterial coating on the textile substrate of the wearable antenna has been employed for the first time to control the effect of bending on wearable antenna performance. The experimental measurements show that the nanomaterial coating of the substrate results in smoother surface and filling up of airgaps in multilayer textile substrate leading to negligibly small shift in resonant frequency value in bent conditions, change in direction of shift and scope of miniaturization of wearable antenna.