Fabric based wearable sensor structures

Nowadays, the electronics are free of their rigid structures and become flexible. As a result of this structural transformation and minimization of electronic materials, they can be integrated into textiles as wearable devices. The sensors are one of the main structures of personalized wearable monitoring devices and they can be classified into physical, chemical, electrical and biological ones. The wearable electronic sensors are able to monitor majorly biomedical signals and other ambient variants. Gesture, body temperature, respiration, pulse, blood gas etc. are among the measured physiological parameters. The other monitored parameters can be defined as environmental variants such as ambient temperature, humidity, sound, gas etc. Different types of textile based sensors are used in wearable personalized devices using different conductive materials in order to measure the vital parameters. Metal coated fabrics, fibres containing metals or metal based additives, knitted and woven structures produced by using conductive yarns etc. can be used as textile based sensors. These sensor structures can be used in several fields such as medical, sport, artistic communities, military and aerospace. In this paper fabric, based wearable sensor types will be reviewed and also it will be focused on the recent advances in the field of these sensors and their usage areas.