Microstrip Line Loaded Simple ELC Resonator Sensor for Dielectric Characterization

In this paper, a metamaterial unit cell- electric-LC resonator-based microstrip sensor is proposed for dielectric characterization. The proposed sensor requires a small amount of sample for testing and works on perturbation theory where the resonance frequency of the resonator is affected when it is loaded with the dielectric sample under test. The proposed sensor is designed to operate in the S-band at 3.376 GHz and is fabricated on the Taconic TLY-5 substrate. A number of standard dielectric materials are tested and their dielectric constant is estimated using the numerical modeling. The obtained values bear a strong agreement with the reference values available in the literature. The proposed sensor exhibits a high accuracy and sensitivity of 4.956 % in comparison to the previous available works.