Flexible electronics is a well-established technology that has reached a degree of maturity in meeting the requirements of tightly assembled electronic packages, in electrical connections where the assembly is required to flex during its normal use, or where board thickness, weight, or space constraints are driving factors. In this context, flexible substrate antennas appear as critical components of a new generation of smart devices, ranging from flexible wireless gadgets to professional wearable remote monitoring and control systems.

Researchers are continuingly seizing on flexible antenna technology to solve the problems of efficiency, reliability, cost, weight, shape, and reproducibility. Flex antennas are rapidly emerging as a popular technology for RFID tags, wearable computer systems and smart clothing, and spurring new applications in wireless sensing, health care supervision, and the integration in search and rescue systems. There is also the need of using environmentally friendly and low-cost materials, in order to allow for the easy disposal of a massive number (in the billions) of those devices.

This special issue aims at reflecting current research trends and new approaches in flex antennas. Prospective authors are invited to submit their original research or review papers dealing with advances in flexible substrate antennas. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• New flexible substrate materials and their characterization
• Flexible antenna modeling and numerical techniques
• Performance measurement of flexible antennas, both as components and being part of a complete system
• Analysis of robustness/sensitivity to bending, stretching, and twisting
• Fabrication techniques, assembly issues, integration, and packaging
• Flexible active antennas and active antenna arrays
• Flexible reconfigurable antennas
• Textile antennas for wearable computing systems and smart clothing
• New applications of flexible antennas

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: