Antenna-Clothing Outperforms Regular Antennas

Zothecula writes with a snippet from Gizmag: "In the recent past, we've seen outfits that incorporate bio-sensors and batteries, and even a bikini with integrated solar cells. One of the latest innovations in smart fabrics, however, allows a person's clothing to act as multiple antennas. Developed at Ohio State University, the system could prove particularly useful to soldiers, who don't want to be encumbered by a protruding whip antenna."

Re:Clarification

[NouberNou]

Actually no, they still use VHF whip antennas quite often in the US military. The SINCGARS frequency hopping system is in the 30 to 87.975MHz range and the ideal antenna length for this range is in the 1 to 2 meter area. Luckily these whips can be folded down and do not actually take up much space when traveling, but of course that inhibits their gain quite a bit.

Even the UHF band that most military coms occurs on has a roughly 13" ideal antenna length. SATURN and HAVE QUICK I/II are in the UHF band only up to 512Mhz.