Dr. Ignacio Gil of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

E-textiles or e-garments for wireless body area network (WBAN) applications in sports,
fitness, medical/health care and fashion sectors are expected to have a significant market
size impact over by the next decade. The electronic integration of microwave components on
textile substrates is a key aspect for the development of smart textiles. To optimize the
wireless transceivers, reliable body-worn antennas as well as transmission lines must be
designed and integrated into the e-garments with a good wearability and user comfort. Low-
profile, lightweight and robust device structures must be manufactured by using industrial
processes allowing mass production. Embroidery process is nowadays an advantageous
technique because of the industrial deployment of digitized embroidered machines. In this
seminar, the state of the art of wearable systems will be reviewed, focusing on recent
advances on wearable antennas and transmission lines. The design, simulation,
manufacturing techniques and experimental results will be considered including the impact
of the human body on the performance of the designs and vice versa. The evaluation of
fabrics elaborated with conductive yarns will be analyzed as well as antenna parameters,
EMC effects and Specific Absorption Rate Regulation (SAR). Moreover, advanced
techniques based on metamaterials for reducing the antenna SAR and allow filtering on
transmission lines will be considered.

Biography:

Prof. Ignacio Gil was born in 1978 in Barcelona, Spain. He received degrees in physics and
electronics engineering in 2000 and 2003, and then his PhD in 2007 from the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. From 2003 to 2008 he was assistant
professor in electronics and a researcher with the RF-Microwave Group in the
Electronic Engineering Department, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, Spain. From
2006 to 2008 he worked for EPSON Europe Electronics GmbH where he developed
high-performance integrated RF CMOS circuits, transceivers and system design. In
2008 he joined the Electronic Engineering Department, Universitat Politècnica de
Catalunya (UPC), Spain, as lecturer and researcher. Since 2011 he is associate
professor at UPC. Since 2012 he is also a collaborator at Universitat Oberta de
Catalunya (UOC), Spain. He has been involved in 12 research projects (3 as principal
researcher) in different research activities including passive and active RF and
microwave devices and circuits, metamaterials, EMC and smart textile electronics. He
is co-author of more than 100 scientific publications and 17 patents. He has been
awarded the Duran Farell de Investigación Tecnológica (2006) and the patent award
from SEIKO EPSON Corporation (2010). From 2012-2014 he served as Chairman of
the Spanish IEEE EMC Chapter.

Email:

Address:Department of Electronic Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Colom, 1, 08222, Terrassa (Barcelona), Spain, Barcelona, Spain, 08222