Distributed Body-worn Transceiver System with the Use of Electro-textile Antennas

In this paper, we propose a distributed body-worn transceiver system for mobile communication, which integrates highly integrated transceivers and electro-textile antennas. The system benefits such as channel capacity were evaluated through the use of wireless sensor network and electro-textile patch antennas. Significant increase in channel capacity was found for the body-worn diversity system as compared to the single traditional small form factor antenna on wireless handheld device, such as the whip antenna. There are two major features causing the capacity increase for the proposed system: 1) the high efficiency of the electro-textile antennas that can be seamlessly embedded into human clothing; 2) significant system diversity gain due to the wide spacing among antennas in the distributed body-worn system. We demonstrate a practical integrated design of a button-size LTCC transceiver package directly interfaced to a wearable wide band stacked patch antenna. The electro-textile antenna with LTCC feed circuit was fabricated and measured to prove the integration feasibility.