$340K funding for Adelaide Uni's wearable textile antennas

Developing wearable textile antennas to monitor activity of our elderly, exploring the cane toad to understand rapid evolution of invasive species and developing ‘metal-organic framework superstructures’ are some of the 635 new research projects to receive Australian Government funding today.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced almost $245 million in new Discovery Projects scheme funding as part of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) 2016 Major Grants Announcement in Adelaide. The funding includes $340,000 for researchers at The University of Adelaide for developing wearable textile antennas that can form robust connections with miniature battery-less motion sensors to monitor activity of our ageing community.

The wearable antennas have potential application in biomedical monitoring, sports analysis, military and emergency communications. They can be incorporated into clothing using computerised embroidery into conductive fabric. A range of different shaped and sized antennas can be produced using altered patterns in the embroidery.

Wearable electronic systems have grown exponentially over the last few years but these devices need very efficient antennas to communicate with the data receiver and to power the sensors being used, according to Dr Thomas Kaufmann, postdoctoral researcher in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

The solution being developed is a t-shirt made of conductive metallised fabric which is low cost, flexible and lightweight. The difficulty of incorporating the electronics has been overcome with using snap-on buttons which form a connection between the textile antenna and the sensor device. These can easily be removed for washing.

The group is investigating various configurations of antennas to optimise their performance for different frequencies and purposes, and are also looking at the replacement of rigid data cables with flexible ones incorporated as transmission lines into t-shirts.