Recent developments in the field of microwave planar sensors have led to a renewed interest in industrial, chemical, biological and medical applications that are capable of performing real-time and non-invasive measurement of material properties. Among the plausible advantages of microwave planar sensors is that they have a compact size, a low cost and the ease of fabrication and integration compared to prevailing sensors. However, some of their main drawbacks can be considered that restrict their usage and limit the range of applications such as their sensitivity and selectivity. The development of high-sensitivity microwave planar sensors is required for highly accurate complex permittivity measurements to monitor the small variations among different material samples. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review recent research on the development of microwave planar sensors and further challenges of their sensitivity and selectivity. Furthermore, the techniques of the complex permittivity extraction (real and imaginary parts) are discussed based on the different approaches of mathematical models. The outcomes of this review may facilitate improvements of and an alternative solution for the enhancement of microwave planar sensors’ normalized sensitivity for material characterization, especially in biochemical and beverage industry applications.

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A Nested complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) was proposed based on planar structure. The main objective of this work is to get a higher quality factor (Q-factor) with minimal error detection of complex permittivity. The sensor operated at the 3.37GHz resonant frequency and simulated by ANSYS HFSS software. Subsequently, the designed sensor has been fabricated and tested with the presence of several material under test (MUTs) placed over the sensor. The result achieved high unloaded Q-factor, 464. There has been proof of good agreement concerning the results between theoretical, simulation, and measured parameters of error detection, which is below 13.2% real part permittivity and 2.3% the loss tangent. The proposed sensor is practically useful for the food industry, bio-sensing, and pharmacy industry applications.

Microwave sensor is used in various industrial applications and requires highly accurate measurements for material properties. Conventionally, cavity waveguide perturbation, free-space transmission, open-ended coaxial probe, and planar transmission line technique have been used for characterizing materials. However, these planar transmission lines are often large and expensive to build, further restricting their use in many important applications. Thus, this technique is cost effective, easy to manufacture and due to its compact size, it has the potential to produce sensitivity and a high Q-factor for various materials. This paper reviews the common characteristics of planar transmission line and discusses numerous studies about several designs of the microstrip resonator to improve the sensor performance in terms of the sensitivity and accuracy. This technique enables its use for several industrial applications such as agriculture and quality control. It is believed that previous studies would lead to a promising solution of characterizing materials with high sensitivity, particularly in determining a high Qfactor resonator sensor.

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