Description
This book presents the methods to integrate flexible conductive materials into flexible dielectric materials for fabricating transparent ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas and polymer matrix composite (PMC) antennas. Generally, UWB systems require the antenna with high efficiency, however, maintaining a high efficiency while achieving extremely wide bandwidth in a UWB system is a challenging task. Therefore, conduction and dielectric losses should be minimized in UWB antenna using highly conductive materials and low dielectric loss materials. Metals are commonly used as antenna radiating elements because of their high conductivity. However, the poor mechanical flexibility of the metals can limit their use for flexible and conformal applications. The question arises if non-metallic flexible conductive materials having conductivity close to metals can be integrated into the flexible dielectric materials to replace metals. This can be solved by integrating flexible conductive materials into flexible dielectric materials. The development of flexible transparent UWB antennas and flexible PMC composite UWB antennas are thoroughly discussed in detail in this book.
