Some Techniques for Mass Production of Textile Wireless Systems

The accurate, reliable and cost-effective mass production of textile wireless systems remains an important challenge and a major impediment to achieve market penetration. Therefore, we propose some novel design, characterization and manufacturing procedures to make the development of such systems more compatible with mass production in traditional assembly line processes. First, we propose a novel non-destructive characterization procedure that determines the dielectric properties of the textile substrate directly within the assembly line, just before manufacturing the textile wireless node. Then, we describe an innovative manufacturing procedure that requires less manipulations and yields more accurate ultra-wideband textile antennas. Finally we introduce a holistic design framework for autonomous textile wireless nodes with communication, sensing and energy-harvesting functionality.