Permittivity-customizable Low-cost Laminated PET Sheet Multilayer Substrate to Design Flexible and Conformal Planar Inverted F Antenna

In this article, a Planar Inverted F Antenna (PIFA) has been designed using low-cost commercially available transparent laminated sheets. Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis is used to acquire the element composition of the transparent laminated sheet. Methods: The flexibility is attained using a market-available low-cost Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) sheet as a substrate. The dielectric properties of this non-conventional laminated sheet need to be identified for antenna design and the microstrip ring resonator test method is used to determine the dielectric properties of the multilayer PET sheets. Results: The linear match has been observed on multilayer laminated PET sheets for dielectric properties and radiation characteristics. Adhesive copper foil of a thickness of 0.08 mm has been used as for conducting layer on the PET lamination sheet. As per the literature survey, it is evident that this is the first attempt to use the reported methodology for PIFA design application. The gain of proposed antenna is 5.2 dB. Conclusion: The designed flexible antenna has been developed for wearable and IoT applications in 2.45 GHz ISM band. A good match has been observed between the simulated and measured characteristics.