A Virtual Environment for Evaluation of Wearable Antenna Performance

Patch antennas that are woven or printed onto flexible clothing substrates are gaining increased interest in body-wearable electronics and for applications such as sport and medical monitoring. However, the flexibility of the substrate and the movements of the body means that the shape of wearable antennas is not fixed, rather it changes in a variety of ways including bending, twisting, crumpling and warping and in many cases results in a shape that is a combination of these effects. To date only one-dimensional (1D) bending deformations, i.e. deformations over a cylinder, have been investigated both theoretically and experimentally [1] . The main reason for this lies in the fact that generating the geometrical CAD models of such deformations is not straightforward under the Cartesian and Constructive Solid Geometry (CGS) framework that most electromagnetic (EM) software are based upon. Furthermore, CAD files produced for the purpose of manufacture often have unphysical gaps between surfaces which are detrimental to EM simulations. Therefore, we identify the generation of the geometries of such flexible antenna shapes as the main obstacle to full evaluation and characterization of wearable antenna performance.