Modeling of selected electric properties of textile signal lines using neural networks

Abstract

Research into new textile transmission lines is currently being conducted. Thanks to the flexibility of textile material used for their construction, these lines can become elements of a textronic system incorporated in modern smart garments to considerably enhance the comfort of its use. Textile transmission lines are required, however, to meet some specific requirements. A properly designed line should assure the minimum of signal losses and reflections. The normalized characteristic impedance of lines is assumed to be 50 ohms. This paper presents a new type of textile transmission lines. A method for measuring the line impedance is discussed. The construction of a measuring stand to be used for testing the electric properties of textile transmission lines is shown. Using artificial neural networks, a model for selected electric properties of textile transmission lines was obtained. The results of a sensibility analysis carried out based on the three-layer perceptron indicates a significant influence of selected model input quantities, such as the width of the inner conductive path, the distance between paths, path surface resistance, path thickness, and the number of warp and weft yarns occurring in a conductive path on the electric properties of textile transmission lines. © 2013, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.