Accurate characterizations of material using microwave T-resonator for solid sensing applications

The topic of microwave sensors in enclosures is one of the most active areas in material characterization research today due to its wide applications in various industries. Surprisingly, a microwave sensor technology has been comprehensively investigated and there is an industry demand for an accurate instrument of material characterization such as food industry, quality control, chemical composition analysis and bio-sensing. These accurate instruments have the ability to understand the properties of materials composition based on chemical, physical, magnetic, and electric characteristics. Therefore, a design of the T-resonator has been introduced and investigated for an accurate measurement of material properties characterizations. This sensor is designed and fabricated on a 0.787 mm-thickness Roger 5880 substrate for the first resonant frequency to resonate at 2.4 GHz under unloaded conditions. Various standard dielectric of the sample under test (SUT) are tested to validate the sensitivity which making it a promising low-cost, compact in size, ease of fabrication and small SUT preparation for applications requiring novel sensing techniques in quality and control industries

Enhanced symmetrical split ring resonator for metallic surface crack detection

An enhanced sensor based on symmetrical split ring resonator (SSRR) functioning at microwave frequencies has been proposed in order to detect and characterize the metal crack of the materials. This sensor is based on perturbation theory, in which the dielectric properties of the material affect the quality factor and resonance frequency of the microwave resonator. Conventionally, coaxial cavity, waveguide, dielectric resonator techniques have been used for characterizing materials. However, these techniques are often large, and expensive to build, which restricts their use in many important applications. Thus, the enhanced bio-sensing technique presents advantages such as high measurement sensitivity with the capability of suppressing undesired harmonic spurious and permits potentially metal crack material detection. Hence, using a High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software, the enhanced sensor is modeled and the reflection S11 is performed for testing the aluminum metal with crack and without crack at the frequency range of 100 MHz to 3GHz. Variation of crack width and depth has been investigated and the most obvious finding emerged from this study is that the ability of detecting a minimum of sub-millimeter crack width and depth which is a round 10 m width or depth where the minimum shift of reflected frequency is recorded at 6.2 MHz and 3 MHz for crack width and depth respectively. The enhanced SSRR provides high capability of detecting small crack defection by utilizing the interaction between coupled gap resonators and it is useful for various applications such as aircraft fuselages, nuclear power plant steam generator tubing, and steel bridges and for others that can be compromised by metal fatigue

Analysis and investigation of a novel microwave sensor with high Q-factor for liquid characterization

In this paper, a new design of microwave sensor with high Q-factor for liquid characterization is analyzed and investigated. The new microwave sensor is based on a gap waveguide cavity resonator (GWCR). The GWCR consists of upper plate, lower plate and array of pins on the lower plate. The liquid under test (LUT) is characterized by placing it inside the GWCR where the electric field concentrates using a quartz capillary that is passing through microfluidic channels. The results show that the proposed sensor has a high Q-factor of 4832. Moreover, the proposed sensor has the ability to characterize different types of liquids such as oils, ethanol, methanol and distilled water. The polynomial fitting method is used to extract the equation of the unknown permittivity of the LUT. The results show that the evaluated permittivity using the proposed sensor has a good agreement with the reference permittivity. Therefore, the proposed sensor is a good candidate for food and pharmaceutical applications

Determination of solid material permittivity using T-ring resonator for food industry

In this paper, we present a simple design of a T-ring resonator sensor for characterizing solid detection.  The sensor is based on a planar microwave ring resonator and operating at 4.2 GHz frequency with a high-quality factor and sensitivity. An optimization of the T-ring geometry and materials were made to achieve high sensitivity for microwave material characterizations. This technique can determine the properties of solid materials from range of 2 GHz to 12 GHz frequencies. Techniques of current microwave resonator are usually measuring the properties of material at frequencies with a wide range; however, their accuracy is limited. Contrary to techniques that have a narrowband which is normally measuring the properties of materials to a high-accuracy with limitation to only a single frequency. This sensor has a capability of measuring the properties of materials at frequencies of wide range to a high-accuracy. A good agreement is achieved between the simulated results of the tested materials and the values of the manufacturer’s Data sheets. An empirical equation has been developed accordingly for the simulated results of the tested materials. Various standard materials have been tested for validation and verification of the sensor sensitivity. The proposed concept enables the detection and characterization of materials and it has miniaturized the size with low cost, reusable, reliable, and ease of design fabrication with using a small size of tested sample. It is inspiring a broader of interest in developing microwave planar sensors and improving their applications in food industry, quality control and biomedical materials

Analysis And Investigation Of A Novel Microwave Sensor With High Q-Factor For Liquid Characterization

In this paper, a new design of microwave sensor with high Q-factor for liquid characterization is analyzed and investigated. The new microwave sensor is based on a gap waveguide cavity resonator (GWCR). The GWCR consists of upper plate, lower plate and array of pins on the lower plate. The liquid under test (LUT) is characterized by placing it inside the GWCR where the electric field concentrates using a quartz capillary that is passing through microfluidic channels. The results show that the proposed sensor has a high Q-factor of 4832. Moreover, the proposed sensor has the ability to characterize different typesof liquids such as oils, ethanol, methanol and distilled water. The polynomial fitting method is used to extract the equation of the unknown permittivity of the LUT. The results show that the evaluated permittivity using the proposed sensor has a good agreement with the reference permittivity. Therefore, the proposed sensor is a good candidate for food and pharmaceutical application

A Review of Characterization Techniques for Material's Properties Measurement using Microwave Resonant Sensor

This paper presents a compilation of important review in the development of microwave resonant sensor technology used in previous years. The major research work for each year is reviewed. Most of the resonators are designed for material characterization in specific application areas such as food quality control, medical, bio-sensing and subsurface detection.  In the last few years, several resonant sensors based on the planar and non-planar structure are compared and examined in order to propose a new topology of microwave sensors designed. The weaknesses of conventional sensors such as bulky size, high cost manufacturing and consume high volumes of detectable sample have been reviewed. Most significantly, this new proposed structure must gain high quality factor to gain improvement in an accuracy of the sensing capability and can overcome previous design weaknesses. This device will discriminate the composition and properties of samples based on scattering parameters in certain operating frequency. The proposed system outlined in this paper, featuring new innovation in resonator structure as well as providing advanced capability design of future research works. The contribution of this study is useful for various types of applications where the characterizing of materials is very important, while improving its performance especially in terms of accuracy and sensitivity. The previous studies will be reviewed and critically compared in order to gain a better understanding in microwave resonant sensors and new ideas for further research improvement in application, which require characterizing of materials

The CSIW Resonator Sensor for Microfluidic Characterization Using Defected Ground Structure

This paper presents a miniaturized circular substrate integrated waveguide (CSIW) resonator sensor with the integration of defected ground structure (DGS) to characterize the dielectric properties of the aqueous solvent. The sensor is developed based on the resonant perturbation method for high sensitivity and accurate measurement. The proposed structure is employed using a substrate integrated waveguide topology at 4.4 GHz with microliter ( ) volume of sample at a time. The integration of DGS structure significantly reduces the overall size of the sensor with more than 50% geometrical reduction. The changes in resonant frequency shows an identical performance based on the relative permittivity of the sample. Implications of the results and future research directions are also presented. Finally, a comparison between the proposed sensors are performed in order to identify the best sensing approach for an advancement of material characterization industry

Real Time Microwave Biochemical Sensor Based on Circular SIW Approach for Aqueous Dielectric Detection

Abstract In this study, a critical evaluation of analyte dielectric properties in a microvolume was undertaken, using a microwave biochemical sensor based on a circular substrate integrated waveguide (CSIW) topology. These dielectric properties were numerically investigated based on the resonant perturbation method, as this method provides the best sensing performance as a real-time biochemical detector. To validate these findings, shifts of the resonant frequency in the presence of aqueous solvents were compared with an ideal permittivity. The sensor prototype required a 2.5 µL volume of the liquid sample each time, which still offered an overall accuracy of better than 99.06%, with an average error measurement of ±0.44%, compared with the commercial and ideal permittivity values. The unloaded Q u factor of the circular substrate-integrated waveguide (CSIW) sensor achieved more than 400 to ensure a precise measurement. At 4.4 GHz, a good agreement was observed between simulated and measured results within a broad frequency range, from 1 to 6 GHz. The proposed sensor, therefore, offers high sensitivity detection, a simple structural design, a fast-sensing response, and cost-effectiveness. The proposed sensor in this study will facilitate real improvements in any material characterization applications such as pharmaceutical, bio-sensing, and food processing applications