Wearable aperture-coupled shorted solar patch antenna for remote tracking and monitoring applications

Author

Declercq, F. ; Georgiadis, Anthimos ; Rogier, H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Technol. (INTEC), Ghent Univ., Ghent, Belgium

fYear

2011

fDate

11-15 April 2011

Firstpage

2992

Lastpage

2996

Abstract

This paper presents the design and characterization of a compact wearable aperture-coupled shorted patch antenna combined with flexible solar cells covering the 902-928 MHz ISM band. The antenna is constructed solely out of flexible foam and textile materials. The parallel connected amorphous silicon (a:Si-H) solar cells are able to deliver a maximum DC power output of about 96 mW. Combining solar cells with a shorted patch antenna allows a simple realization of the DC output wire connections without disturbing the antenna´s radiation characteristics. A measured on-body antenna gain and bandwidth of about 1.6 dBi and 63 MHz are realized, respectively.

Keywords

UHF antennas; aperture-coupled antennas; flexible electronics; microstrip antennas; monitoring; radio tracking; solar cells; wearable antennas; DC output wire connections; DC power output; ISM band; flexible foam materials; flexible solar cells; flexible textile materials; frequency 902 MHz to 928 MHz; on-body antenna bandwidth; on-body antenna gain; parallel connected amorphous silicon solar cells; remote monitoring; remote tracking; wearable aperture-coupled shorted solar patch antenna; Antenna measurements; Extraterrestrial measurements; Gain measurement; Microstrip antennas; Patch antennas; Photovoltaic cells;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on

Conference_Location

Rome

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0250-1

Type

conf

Filename

5782208