Microwave Technology: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

At present, water quality control is still dominated by laboratory analysis of grab samples. Sensors are only available for a very limited number of parameters and frequently do not entirely meet the needs of the users. Even a brief overview of the state-of-the-art in the real time water monitoring reveals that it is not possible to achieve adequate detection of water parameters by using only one type of sensor. Accordingly, the solution is to merge various technologies into a single system that would employ the best available methods for the detection of specific water contaminants, so as to provide overall superior sensitivity, selectivity and long-term stability, while enabling real-time wireless data collection for enhanced cost-effectiveness. Namely, multi-sensor platforms that utilise the best available methods combined into a single monitoring process are seen as the only way to achieve the holistic monitoring capabilities. It is suggested that a special role in this development is reserved for microwave technology based sensors a missing piece in the puzzle to potentially solve the issue of real-time water quality control. This paper reviews the capabilities of microwave sensors for real-time water quality monitoring as compared to other alternative methods, namely standard UV-VIS optical methods; fibre optic sensors; amperometric sensors, biosensors, specifically-sensitive microelectrodes and lab-on-chip sensing systems.