Advancement in Ultra Wideband Antennas for Wearable Applications

There has been a tremendous rumble in UWB research after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated a frequency range with a bandwidth of 7.5 GHz from 3.1–10.6 GHz for UWB applications. Ultra wideband (UWB) technology was earlier limited to special applications, primarily in the military area and there primarily to electronic warfare. The antennas were usually horn antennas or modified, ridged horn antennas, sometimes in combination with reflectors. Wearable intelligent textile system is an innovative fast growing field in application oriented field. In recent years, body-centric wireless communication becomes an important part of fourth generation mobile communication systems (4G). Utilization of wearable textiles in the antenna segment has been seen on the rise due to the recent miniaturization of wireless devices. Wearable and fabric-based antennas have become one of the dominant research topics in antennas for body-centric communications. The review presented here intended to disclose the unconventional antenna technology including UWB technology for wearable applications. Contributions by various researchers have been compiled keeping in mind background of UWB technology, the wearable antenna, and specification of the antenna, material for the antenna and analysis that must be done to design proper UWB wearable antennas for various applications.