Textile Soft Surface for Back Radiation Reduction in Bent Wearable Antennas

A textile soft surface is proposed to reduce back radiation of a textile patch antenna, and the performance is analyzed when the antenna is placed on a bent surface. This surface is assumed to be curved around cylinders with varying radii to emulate the real operation of the textile antenna when it is worn on the body, e.g., back, shoulders or arms. Two scenarios are considered for the evaluation of the performance of the antenna with the soft surface: a bent finite ground plane over an air cylinder and a more accurate model in which the electromagnetic properties of the body are included. In both situations the back radiation is reduced when compared to the same antenna without the soft surface. These results have been validated with experimental data which support this conclusion. This is the first textile implementation of a soft surface and the first demonstration that a soft surface can reduce the back radiation of a patch antenna in a conformal configuration.