Use of Minkowski Fractal Geometry for the Design of Wearable Fully Fabric Compact Antenna

Abstract

This paper describes the use of Minkowski fractal geometries for the design of wearable electro-textile or fully-fabric antenna. Two electro-textile materials namely Flectron and Shieldit are considered for the design of flexible microstrip antenna. Flectron and Shieldit fabric materials are used for ground plane and patch of the antenna respectively. In this design, polyester fabric material has been employed as dielectric medium. In the basic design, the antenna is designed for WLAN applications. The designed Shieldit antenna provides a gain of 5.9 dB with an impedance bandwidth of 130 MHz. By applying Minkowski fractal geometry to the antenna, miniaturization or compactness is achieved. In its first iteration, antenna design is optimized and tuned to WiBro band and in the second iteration, antenna is further miniaturized in order to make it suitable for GSM 1900 applications. In these two bands, the gain and efficiency of the Shieldit antenna conform to their respective wireless standards.