Woven Fabric-Based Electrical Circuits

One important problem in electronic textiles is crosstalk and lack of signal integrity between conductive lines. Two significant advantages of electronic textiles over tradi tional circuit boards are flexibility and the ability to scale to large areas. Capacitive and inductive crosstalk is aggravated by long parallel conductors, and varies as the electronic textile is flexed into different configurations. This paper evaluates crosstalk between woven parallel conductors. Two new thread structures—coaxial and twisted pair copper threads—to minimize cross talk are developed and evaluated. Significant reductions in crosstalk are obtained with the coaxial and twisted pair thread structures when compared with bare copper threads or insulated conductive threads.