Microwave and Millimeter Wave Circuits and Systems: Emerging Design, Technologies and Applications, 2nd Edition

15

Active Wearable Antenna Modules

Frederick Declercq¹, Hendrik Rogier¹, Apostolos Georgiadis² and Ana Collado²

¹Department of Information Technology (INTEC), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

²Technological Telecommunications Centre of Catalonia (CTTC), Castelldefels, Spain

15.1 Introduction

Wearable textile systems are intended to improve the user's awareness of his/her physical conditions such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and so on, and environmental conditions including relative humidity, temperature, and so on, and this by unobtrusive integration of sensing, actuating and computing functionalities into clothing. In addition, unobtrusive integration of wireless communication systems provides real-time monitoring capabilities or it allows communication between different users in an ad hoc network. Typical applications are found in the health-care industry and in rescue operations, during which the deployment of smart wearable systems will help in drastically improving the rescuer's main task, that is, saving human lives. In order to provide a user friendly, inconspicuous, and low-cost intelligent textile system, wearability is an utmost important feature of the system and implies that the system should be lightweight, breathable, and flexible in order not to disturb the user's agility. A typical wearable textile system is composed of six distinct components, being sensors, actuators, power supply, interconnections, communication unit, and a data processing unit. ...