Design and Fabrication of Compact Inkjet Printed Antennas for Integration Within Flexible and Wearable Electronics

The demand for flexible and wearable wireless systems is increasing exponentially in today´s information-oriented society. These systems are extremely beneficial and applied in a wide spectrum of fields, such as personal communication, medicine, military, firefighting, entertainment, aeronautics, and radio frequency identification. In this paper, the design constraints, fabrication process, flexibility tests, and measurement of flexible and wearable antennas are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the design, fabrication, and testing of a compact flexible ultrawideband antenna are presented. The proposed design has the merits of light weight, ultralow profile (50.8 μm), wideband width, mechanical robustness, compactness, and high efficiency. The antenna is also tested against bending effects to characterize its performance in a realistic setup since it is expected to be conformed on curved surfaces and/or flexed during operation.