Strain-Insensitive Hierarchically Structured Stretchable Microstrip Antennas for Robust Wireless Communication

• 作者: Jia Zhu Senhao Zhang Ning Yi Chaoyun Song Donghai Qiu Zhihui Hu Bowen Li Chenghao Xing Hongbo Yang Qing Wang Huanyu Cheng
• 来源期刊: 纳微快报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（8）
• 页码范围: 1-12
• 页数: 12页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

As the key component of wireless data transmission and powering, stretch-able antennas play an indispensable role in flexible/stretchable electronics. However, they often suffer from frequency detuning upon mechanical deformations; thus, their applica-tions are limited to wireless sensing with wireless transmission capabilities remaining elu-sive. Here, a hierarchically structured stretchable microstrip antenna with meshed patterns arranged in an arched shape showcases tunable resonance frequency upon deformations with improved overall stretchability. The almost unchanged resonance frequency during deforma-tions enables robust on-body wireless communication and RF energy harvesting, whereas the rapid changing resonance frequency with deformations allows for wireless sensing. The proposed stretchable microstrip antenna was demonstrated to communicate wirelessly with a transmitter (input power of - 3 dBm) efficiently (i.e., the receiving power higher than - 100 dBm over a distance of 100 m) on human bod-ies even upon 25％ stretching. The flexibility in structural engineering combined with the coupled mechanical-electromagnetic simulations, provides a versatile engineering toolkit to design stretchable microstrip antennas and other potential wireless devices for stretchable electronics.