Performance Comparison of E-Textile Electrode Properties in a Capacitive Proximity Sensing Setting

New sensing capabilities are rendered possible by using materials with new capabilities. Such materials as e-textiles are especially well suited to be integrated into the sensing technology embedding materials. Thus, e-textiles are predetermined to be used while creating flexible Smart Environment applications. As there are many manufacturing possibilities for the electrode-material integration, the creation of these sensing and interactive surfaces has not been analysed in a structured way, with regards to the capacitive proximity sensing performance. In this paper we contribute a performance evaluation in relation to electrode material, size, filling degree, stitching type, shapes, stretching, and support materials. This structured evaluation and the resulting findings support application developers in choosing the best suited electrode design for their capacitive proximity sensing application.