Developing and study of wearable and flexible antennas for Body Area Networks working under extreme conditions

The emergence of wearable intelligent textile systems with sensors and actuators nodes are integrated into user clothes. Emergency units can benefit from new technologies to improve their performance and security conditions when working exposed to risk situations. In firefighters case is a the system Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) at 2.4GHz with a watch to show the thermal stress and, in case of exceed healthy level will trigger an alarm to warn the user. In this scenario the design and study of the working conditions of an antenna is a crucial issue for ensuring the communication capabilities of the the whole system. In this work paper we present the design, development and test of a miniature flexible antenna prepared to integrate in the uniforms maintaining the radiation properties although bend or warming. We will see how to minimize the size of the antenna with a antenna PIFA on a Polyethylene Terephtalate (PET) substrate.