Antennas on materials: Small, robust, flexible

The expansion of wireless technologies for communications, inventory control, remote control and monitoring presents great challenges to antenna designers. While the radiation characteristics remain an important factor in all antenna design, the challenges of using antennas in difficult and dynamic environments, of low cost manufacture and environmental sustainability are additional parameters for the cost function used in computational optimization for the design of antennas. This paper reports the design constraints and optimized solutions of antennas for sports monitoring. A simple meander-line antenna fabricated in plastic has more than a 50% reduction in environmental impact compared to etched copper.