Study on the performance deterioration of flexible UWB antennas

A flexible transparent film UWB antenna for curved surfaces has been designed and developed for wireless communications. The antenna has demonstrated good performance over the entire UWB bandwidth. It can be mounted on any conformal shape by virtue of the film properties of both the antenna as well as the substrate. The radiator and ground are both designed using AgHT-8 while the substrate is of a polymer. The antenna is shown to be able to maintain its performance below the 10 dB level throughout the entire UWB bandwidth of 7.5 GHz i.e from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz as it is flexed through various radius of curvature thus providing an insight into how to overcome performance deterioration in wearable antennas.