A Textile Ultra-Wideband Antenna

Abstract

This thesis presents the design and testing of an ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna constructed on textile materials. The antenna is designed with approximately 3:1 bandwidth, resonating at 3.1-10.6 GHz as authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This design includes the following considerations: small geometrical dimensions, wide bandwidth, good impedance matching characteristics, gain flatness and phase linearity. As this antenna is built on a textile substrate, which is an insulator with high flexibility and varying thickness, choice of patch antennas used is also important. This thesis includes the selection of a monopole antenna from a range of different ultra-wideband antenna designs and the optimization of this monopole antenna to cater to the desired operating frequencies and performance requirements via simulation. The antenna was then fabricated with chosen textile substrates, tested, and tuned to prove that an effective design can be made for the results that are discussed.