Patch antenna based temperature sensor

In this paper, we studied the microstrip patch antenna for the purpose of temperature sensing. The relationship between the antenna resonant frequency shift and temperature variation is first derived based on the transmission line model. A substrate material was selected to achieve a linear sensor response. Temperature chamber tests on patch antenna sensors bonded to three different test samples were carried out. Preliminary experimental results indicated a linear relation between the normalized antenna resonant frequency changes and temperature variations. However, a large discrepancy between the measured and predicted sensitivities was observed, which indicated that the thermal strain might have a significant influence on the dielectric constant of the substrate. To account for this effect, we introduced a strain coefficient of dielectric constant to quantify the effect of strain on the dielectric constant. With the modified theoretical predictions, the errors between the measurements and predictions were within the systematic error of the reference thermocouple, which validates the feasibility of using a microstrip patch antenna for temperature sensing.