Clothing with built in WiFi

Clothing with built in WiFi

Materials are being tested for suitability to develop wearable antennas for monitoring, communication and energy harvesting and storage. Textiles have properties that are not ideal as regards being reliable antennas, but companies are working to improve this.

We may become surrounded by people wearing clothing designed to keep them in constant touch with their electromagnetic environment. Heaven for some, hell for others.

There will be an increasing need to monitor where we are going and even to avoid crowded places, especially shopping centres which may be offering such garments.

We expect the price will put people off as the material will not be cheap. But what do we know? We no longer seem to have a choice in the health or otherwise of our environment.

To misquote 'The future is scary, whatever the colour.'

Article on Pubmed

Salvado, R, Loss C, Goncalves R, Pinho P 2012 - Textile materials for the design of wearable antennas: a survey - Sensors (Basel) 12(11):15841-57

http://www.emfields.org/news/20130614-wifi-in-clothing.asp