Integrated Microwave Antenna/Sensor for Sensing and Communication Applications

Abstract

In this article, a dual-functional microwave system with a single input port that can simultaneously be used for antenna and sensor applications is presented. The dual-functional ability of the proposed system is achieved by integrating a two-port microwave sensor and a Wi-Fi antenna with a novel frequency-selective multipath filter (FSMF). The FSMF ensures efficient system operation by not affecting the operational bandwidth of the communicating antenna in the presence of different sensed materials under test (MUTs) on top of the sensor. The proposed microwave sensor also has a unique capability of measuring one more sensing parameter in addition to the often used reflection and transmission coefficients. The additional parameter is the frequency distance of two closely spaced resonance frequencies of the microwave sensor in the presence of an MUT. Compared to existing state-of-the-art techniques, the additional sensing parameter (as done in this work) can be used as an alternative to transmission coefficient for characterization of different MUTs or as an additional parameter giving more degree of freedom. The entire system is designed in a single substrate with a common input source. The performance of the dual-functional system was tested using different MUTs and showed a good agreement with the measurement results.