Van Baelen Dries, Lemey Sam, Verhaevert Jo, Rogier Hendrik
Department of Information Technology, Ghent University/imec, Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 15, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
Materials (Basel). 2018 Jan 3;11(1):67. doi: 10.3390/ma11010067.
A novel manufacturing procedure for the fabrication of ultra-wideband cavity-backed substrate integrated waveguide antennas on textile substrates is proposed. The antenna cavity is constructed using a single laser-cut electrotextile patch, which is folded around the substrate. Electrotextile slabs protruding from the laser-cut patch are then vertically folded and glued to form the antenna cavity instead of rigid metal tubelets to implement the vertical cavity walls. This approach drastically improves mechanical flexibility, decreases the antenna weight to slightly more than 1 g and significantly reduces alignment errors. As a proof of concept, a cavity-backed substrate integrated waveguide antenna is designed and realized for ultra-wideband operation in the [5.15-5.85] GHz band. Antenna performance is validated in free space as well as in two on body measurement scenarios. Furthermore, the antenna's figures of merit are characterized when the prototype is bent at different curvature radii, as commonly encountered during deployment on the human body. Also the effect of humidity content on antenna performance is studied. In all scenarios, the realized antenna covers the entire operating frequency band, meanwhile retaining a stable radiation pattern with a broadside gain above 5 dBi, and a radiation efficiency of at least 70%.
提出了一种在纺织基板上制造超宽带背腔式基板集成波导天线的新型制造工艺。天线腔体由单个激光切割的电纺织贴片构成,该贴片围绕基板折叠。然后将从激光切割贴片伸出的电纺织板垂直折叠并粘贴,以形成天线腔体,而不是使用刚性金属细管来实现垂直腔壁。这种方法极大地提高了机械柔韧性,将天线重量降低到略高于1克,并显著减少对准误差。作为概念验证,设计并实现了一种背腔式基板集成波导天线,用于在[5.15 - 5.85]GHz频段进行超宽带操作。在自由空间以及两种人体测量场景中对天线性能进行了验证。此外,当原型在不同曲率半径下弯曲时(这在人体部署过程中经常遇到),对天线的品质因数进行了表征。还研究了湿度对天线性能的影响。在所有场景中,所实现的天线覆盖了整个工作频段,同时保持稳定的辐射方向图,宽边增益高于5 dBi,辐射效率至少为70%。