A Novel Method for Water Impurity Concentration using Microstrip Resonator Sensor

Beulah Jackson,
Sathyabama University, Chennai, India. beulah_jack@yahoo.com

T. Jayanthy,
Panimalar Institute of Technology, Chennai, India. jayanthymd@rediffmail.com

Abstract-Water pollution is one of the severe problems that have a crippling effect on public hygiene. The detection of impurities present in the water is of high priority to battle its effects. In this paper, we propose a novel method to perform detection of such impurities by exploiting the dielectric constant variations caused by its presence. We present a microstrip resonator that measures the dielectric constant (relative permittivity) of the water by means of variation in resonant frequency. The design makes use of Defected ground structure (DGS) for enhanced resonance. The electromagnetic field distribution, resonant frequency and quality factor of the design are computed and analyzed. The microstrip resonator presented here has some virtues such as simple structure, easy manufacture, low cost etc. The resonator has been simulated using HFSS 9. Keywords-Microstrip resonator; defective ground structure (DGS); dielectric constant; resonant frequency; qulality factor;

microstrip lines, coplanar waveguides, and strip lines have found their applications in permittivity measurements. Here, we put forward a simple technique for employing this technology in detection of dielectric variations in water. It exploits a relationship between the resonant frequency and relative permittivity. The readings can be noted and compared with a standard table and the ppm (parts per million) content can be deciphered. A simulation of the same has been carried out for the relative permittivity in the range of 2 3. II. STRUCTURE OF THE ETCHED-DISC RESONATOR The basic design of the proposed resonator is shown in Fig.1 and Fig. 2. The dimension of dielectric substrate is 50 50mm2. The height is 0.25 mm; the relative dielectric coefficient is 2.2. The strip is a circular disc of radius r. The height fixed as 10% of the dielectric thickness. The disc is etched on either side leaving a patch at the center. This patch serves to concentrate the electromagnetic energy to the centre of the resonator. The dielectric is elevated around the disc to a height of 0.5 mm. The area of this portion is governed by the radius R. The ground conductor is etched with a template that resembles the strip above. This Defected Ground Structure (DGS) serves to concentrate the field lines further to the patch. III. FIELD ANALYSIS OF THE RESONATOR The electromagnetic field distributions of the dominant mode are shown in Fig.3 and Fig.4 respectively. It can be seen that the electromagnetic energy is concentrated in the centre patch. The electric magnitude is far more than magnetic magnitude. The electric field vector is found to be normal to the plane of the paper (Fig. 6) while the magnetic field vector forms a coiled pattern along the plane of the paper. EFFECT OF PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS ON RESONANCE PARAMETERS The two main dimensional quantities of this resonator are the strip radius r and the dielectric elevation radius R. Analysis has revealed that both these dimensions do not affect the resonant frequency of the resonator. All the 3 modes verified had a constant resonant frequency irrespective of change in the patch dimensions (Fig. 6). However the quality factor of the resonator is determined by both these dimensions and the relation between them. While varying the patch radius r, R was fixed at 23 mm (Fig. 7). During the analysis of variation IV.

I. INTRODUCTION The ever growing realms of technological development have some undesired effects, especially on the environment. One such important issue is water pollution. As water is one of the basic necessities of existence a contamination of the same will directly affect the society. Therefore detection of the unwanted particle content present in water is an important tool in decimating its adverse impact. Microstrip is the main transmission line applied in microwave integrated circuit. It facilitates microwave equipment miniaturization and improves the performance of the equipment. Microstrip resonators have very important applications in microwave or millimeter wave systems. They are an important component for designing filters, oscillators, antennas etc. The performances of a microstrip resonator mainly depends on its electromagnetic field distribution, resonant frequency, quality factor Q and so on. Since the emergence of microstrip technology as a dominant architecture, varying types of microstrip resonators have been developed to suit the needs of different microwave circuits. In this paper we propose a novel etched-disc resonator with a good field distribution and quality factor. The design makes use of Defected ground structure (DGS) [1] to obtain an enhanced resonance. DGS is a novel technique used to improve the performance of filter or other microwave components, and it is formed by etching a defected pattern on the ground plane. Microstrip resonators have been used for permittivity measurements in microwave engineering, microwave material processing, microwave chemistry, and bio-electromagnetics [2][5]. Recently planar circuits, such as

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in R, r was a constant at 17 mm (Fig 8). Simulation has revealed the presence of an optimal value of patch radius and the elevated dielectric radius for which the quality factor of all modes are at their peak, in the order of thousand (Table 1).

Figure 4. Magnetic Field Distribution of the dominant mode

Figure 1. resonator design (top view)

Figure 5. vector electric field distribution

Figure 2. resonator design (bottom view)

Figure 3. Electric Field Distribution of the dominant mode

Figure 6. frequency versus patch radius r

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Where vp is the phase velocity and leff is the effective length of the microstrip. The phase velocity is depended upon the permittivity of the dielectric (Eq. 2). It is this property which can be exploited to measure the simple dielectric constant of liquids.
TABLE I. Mode 1 2 3
OPTIMUM RESONANCE PARAMETERS

Resonant frequency 2.12 3.74 3.78

Quality factor 931 1351 1971

Figure 7. Quality Factor versus patch radius r

Figure 9. Resonant frequency versus dielectric strength (mode 1)

Figure 8. Quality Factor versus elevation radius R

by

USE OF THE RESONATOR FOR DIELECTRIC MEASUREMENT The resonant frequency f0 of microstrip resonator is given

V.

Inorder to display the change in resonant frequency brought in by variation in the relative permittivity of the material filled into the (DGS) a simulation study was made on the same. A test range of relative permittivity (2 to 3) was taken for this purpose. While the resonant frequency for test r = 2 was found to be 2.913 GHz the value dropped down to 2.875 GHz for r = 2.8, a decrease of almost 40 Mhz. this shows that there exists a nearly linear relationship between the permittivity of the material that fills the etched portion in ground and the resonant frequency (Fig. 9). Thus by filling the ground with the dielectric of unknown permittivity and measuring the resonant frequency the dielectric strength can be obtained easily (Fig. 10). The bench setup is shown in the Fig. 10. The test jig shall contain the water whose impurity concentration has to be calculated. This jig is inserted into the defective ground and the resonant frequency of the microstrip is calculated. Previously, a standard table can be prepared in a lab setting by verifying the relative permittivities of water containing known level of impurities (using the same test setup). Later the observed results are compared with this table and thus ppm values can be discovered. One of the many advantages of the proposed setup is its simple architecture.

vp = C / r

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Once the standard chart is prepared the calculation of ppm becomes a straight forward matter of finding the resonant frequency and tracing it out in the chart. Further the setup also reveals the electromagnetic properties of the impurities which may aid in analyzing its impact on the environment.

VI. CONCLUSION In this paper, the electromagnetic field distribution, resonant frequency and quality factor of a novel etched-disc microstrip resonator are computed and analyzed. The design was simulated in HFSS (Ansoft Co. Ltd.), the result shows that resonator has some virtues such as enhanced resonance and quality factor. A simple method for dielectric strength measurement was also proposed and analyzed. REFERENCES
[1] [2] Jun-Sik Yun et.al., A design of the novel coupled line bandpass filter using defected ground structure, IEEE MTT-S. Digest, 2000, pp.327-330 Waldron, S. N. Makarov, S. Biederman, and R. Ludwig, Sus pended ring resonator for dielectric constant measurement of foams, IEEE Microw.Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 16, no. 9, pp. 496 498, Sep. 2006 S. N. Makarov, S. D. Kulkarni, A. G. Marut, and L. C. Kempel, Method of moments solution for a printed patch/sl ot antenna on a thin finite dielectric substrate using the volume integral equation, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 1174 1184, Apr. 2006 K.Huang, X. Cao, and C. Liu, Measurement/computation of effective permittivity of dilute solution in saponification reaction, IEEE Trans. Microwave. Theory Tech., vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 106 2111, Oct. 2003. L. Yan, K. Huang, and C. Liu, A noninvasive method for determining dielectric properties of layered tissues on human back, J. Electromagetic Waves Appl., vol. 21, no. 13, pp. 1829 1843, Oct. 2007 Changjun Liu and Yang Pu, A Microstrip Resonator With Slotted Ground Plane for Complex Permittivity Measurements of Liquids, IEEE Microwave and wireless components letters, Vol 18, No.4, pp.257259, April 2008.

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

Figure 10. proposed test setup

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