Body-centric communication

As can be intuitively understood, the reason behind the use of textile materials in antennas lies in the application for which they are intended, being smart textile systems and body-centric communication. 

Finally, communication is realized in a wireless way by means of an integrated wearable textile antenna in combination with a wearable transceiver. Such a kind of wireless communication takes place between the human body and the surrounding environment and is also referred to as body-centric communication. In parallel with textile antennas, this has become a very popular field of research over the last decade [1], with cmcial importance for plenty of applications, ranging from monitoring of vital signs of patients to coordination and monitoring of rescue workers [2], but also in the entertainment sector [3] and in sports [4]. 

A well-known adverse effect in body-centric communications is caused by fading and shadowing of a signal received by a moving subject equipped with a wearable antenna system. These phenomena are a consequence of multipath propagation and have a negative effect on power consumption. In parficular, these random fluctuations on the received signal produce an increase of the bit error rate (BER). 

N. Chahat, M. Zhadobov, S. Muhammad, L. Le Coq, R. Sauleau, 60-GHz textile antenna array for body-centric communications, IEEE Trans. Antenn. Propag. 61 (4) (April 2013)... 

Industrial, scientific, and medical bands are reserved portions of the radio spectrum, defined by the ITU Radio Regulations [23], that are employed in body-centric wireless communication applications and, more in general, for other industrial, medical, and scientific applications. The majority of textile antennas developed to date are intended for operation in some of those ISM bands, especially in the 2.45 GHz, by far the most popular for wearable antennas, and 5.8 GHz bands. The first band represents a good trade-off between antenna dimensions (inversely proportional to fiequency) and path loss (increasing with frequency), whereas the second is more convenient when... 

P. Hall, Y. Hao, Antennas and Propagation for Body-centric Wireless Communications, second ed., Artech House, Norwood, MA, 2012, p. 400. 

N. Chahat, M. Zhadobov, R. Sauleau, Antennas for body centric wireless communications at millimeter-wave frequencies, in D.L. Huitema (Ed.), Progress in Compact Antennas, InTech, 2014. 

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