Honey adulteration is common in the food industry as it provides a cheaper alternative for the user to consume honey. However, it has been abused by industry runners with unsavory practices. As a result, it leads to business fraudulency. Pure honey is very precious due to its powerful health-giving properties. It raises the attention of beekeepers, wholesalers, food manufacturers, retailers, and consumers because this issue has been sensationally reported in mass media. Enforcement of the law is initiated to mitigate the abuse and fraudulency. It also motivates scientists, technologists, and engineers to strive for an effective solution. The microwave sensing method is well known in agricultural products and food. Hence, dielectric and reflection responses are explored to study the potential of the development of an instrumentation system for gauging edible honey. In this work, the dielectric and reflection measurement was conducted using Agilent E8362B PNA Network Analyzer in conjunction with Agilent 85070E Performance Probe from 0.5 GHz to 4.5 GHz. Dielectric and reflection measurements were conducted to investigate dielectric behavior and mismatch impedance due to water and sucrose content in honey. It can be noticed that the dielectric constant, ε', decreases as frequency increases. In the meantime, ε' decreases with the decrement of water and the increment of sucrose content for Honey Gold and Trigona Honey. Meanwhile, for water adulterated Honey Gold and Trigona Honey, the loss factor, ε" decreases when frequencies increase. In addition, ε" decreases when the water content is < 36% and < 43% for Honey Gold and Trigona Honey, respectively. It can be found that at 1 GHz to 4 GHz, ε" increases when sucrose content increases which is applicable for Honey Gold and Trigona Honey. In reflection measurement, the magnitude of reflection coefficient, |Γ| decreases when frequency increases for all percentage of water and sucrose content for both kinds of honey. Withal, phase, -φ increases as frequency increases for water adulterated honey. -φ varies insignificantly when sucrose content increases for sucrose adulterated honey.

Honey adulteration is one of the major health concerns among honey consumers, it is essential to inspect the quality of honey. One of the methods is to characterize the honey by using the microwave reflection technique. A Five-Port Reflectometer (FPR) is proposed in this work. The microstrip Five-Port ring junction circuit was designed for multiple frequencies of 0.60 GHz, 2.28 GHz, and 3.47 GHz. The fabricated circuit works with an analogue-digital converter, open-ended coaxial sensor, diode detectors and computer to form a complete FPR measurement system. The reflection measurements were conducted on Honey Gold and Trigona Honey for multiple frequencies. The performance of the FPR in s-parameter measurement was verified by Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). This study shown that the performance of FPR in term of reflection measurement has promising accuracy which is comparable with VNA. The FPR can be used as an alternative instrumentation system for characterizing pure and adulterated honey.