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Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking
In the context of localization and sensing within the Internet of Things, new antenna manufacturing technologies, such as antennas printed with conductive inks on thin thermoplastic sheets, allow for seamless integration into plastic objects produced by an injection molding process. In this paper, w...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9185571/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35684695 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22114077 |
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author | Lima de Paula, Igor Rogier, Hendrik Van Torre, Patrick |
author_facet | Lima de Paula, Igor Rogier, Hendrik Van Torre, Patrick |
author_sort | Lima de Paula, Igor |
collection | PubMed |
description | In the context of localization and sensing within the Internet of Things, new antenna manufacturing technologies, such as antennas printed with conductive inks on thin thermoplastic sheets, allow for seamless integration into plastic objects produced by an injection molding process. In this paper, we present printed sensor antennas for the [862–928] MHz band supporting LoRa and Sigfox and the [2.4–2.5] GHz band for WiFi, Bluetooth, and IEEE802.15.4 communication. To integrate them into smart suitcases, the antennas are printed, overmolded, tested, and measured, following a dedicated conformal integration strategy consisting of two design iterations. Additionally, as a more convenient connection to the printed antennas, printed transmission lines along with a dedicated transition to printed circuit board technologies are implemented and characterized, avoiding rigid coaxial connectors that exhibit fragile mounting on flexible substrates. The overmolded stand-alone antennas achieve fractional impedance bandwidths of 26% and 15% covering the [862–928] MHz and [2.4–2.5] GHz bands, respectively, with a substantial margin and with in-band simulated total efficiencies of 94% and 88%, respectively. Finally, the seamless integration of two antennas into a smart suitcase for tracing via Sigfox and WiFi demonstrates the potential of the proposed technique to realize high-performance antennas occupying virtually no real estate. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9185571 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91855712022-06-11 Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking Lima de Paula, Igor Rogier, Hendrik Van Torre, Patrick Sensors (Basel) Article In the context of localization and sensing within the Internet of Things, new antenna manufacturing technologies, such as antennas printed with conductive inks on thin thermoplastic sheets, allow for seamless integration into plastic objects produced by an injection molding process. In this paper, we present printed sensor antennas for the [862–928] MHz band supporting LoRa and Sigfox and the [2.4–2.5] GHz band for WiFi, Bluetooth, and IEEE802.15.4 communication. To integrate them into smart suitcases, the antennas are printed, overmolded, tested, and measured, following a dedicated conformal integration strategy consisting of two design iterations. Additionally, as a more convenient connection to the printed antennas, printed transmission lines along with a dedicated transition to printed circuit board technologies are implemented and characterized, avoiding rigid coaxial connectors that exhibit fragile mounting on flexible substrates. The overmolded stand-alone antennas achieve fractional impedance bandwidths of 26% and 15% covering the [862–928] MHz and [2.4–2.5] GHz bands, respectively, with a substantial margin and with in-band simulated total efficiencies of 94% and 88%, respectively. Finally, the seamless integration of two antennas into a smart suitcase for tracing via Sigfox and WiFi demonstrates the potential of the proposed technique to realize high-performance antennas occupying virtually no real estate. MDPI 2022-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9185571/ /pubmed/35684695 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22114077 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Lima de Paula, Igor Rogier, Hendrik Van Torre, Patrick Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking |
title | Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking |
title_full | Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking |
title_fullStr | Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking |
title_full_unstemmed | Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking |
title_short | Conformal Integration of Efficient Conductive-Ink-Printed Antennas in Smart Suitcases for LPWAN-Based Luggage Tracking |
title_sort | conformal integration of efficient conductive-ink-printed antennas in smart suitcases for lpwan-based luggage tracking |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9185571/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35684695 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22114077 |
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