Conductive Ink Printed Fabric Antenna with Aperture Feeding Technique

Abstract

Screen-printed and inkjet-printed conductive fabric antennas have been investigated in this manuscript. The former showed optimal radiation performance after fabrication and measurement, which was the basis for developing a new fabric antenna feeding technique. The aperture-fed technique is achieved with a single coaxial cable overlayed on a cut-out slot on the ground layer of the patch antenna. The cable is connected with conductive silver-based epoxy paste with high resilience to mechanical stress. Two antenna models for Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and long-range (LoRa) wireless applications were designed, fabricated, and measured at 2.44 GHz and 868 MHz, respectively, with good impedance and radiation performance. The measured antennas operated from 2.4 to 2.48 GHz (BLE) and 853 to 886 MHz (LoRa) at −10 dB S11. Measured results also showed a 56% radiation efficiency at BLE and 44.9% at LoRa. The screen-printing procedure and feeding technique have been presented in this manuscript.

Keywords

• antenna feeds
• aperture-fed antennas
• BLE
• conductive textile
• inkjet-printed antenna
• LoRa