A DIELECTRIC MEASUREMENT

TECHNIQUE FOR CYLINDRICAL OBJECTS

WITH KNOWN CROSS SECTION
Kamal Sarabandi
Radiation Lab oratory
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122, USA

Abstract
Motivated by the need for an accurate method to measure the complex dielectric
constant of pine needles at microwave frequencies both in situ and in vivo conditions,
problem of scattering from a dielectric post in a rectangular waveguide is considered.
In this analysis, the dielectric post is assumed to be uniform in cross section and
dielectric constant and is placed vertically in a rectangular waveguide supporting
TElo mode. The dielectric constant is computed from the measured voltage reflection
coefficient of a matched waveguide containing the dielectric post. Inversion algorithm
for computation of dielectric constant e from the reflection coefficient is based on the
method of moments and eigen analysis. In this method the integral equation for the
polarization current induced in the dielectric post is cast into a matrix equation and
then the contribution of e to the resulting reflection coefficient is expressed explicitly
using the eigen analysis. It is shown that the dielectric constant is a solution to a
complex polynomial function which can be obtained numerically using the conjugate
gradient method.
Practical aspect of dielectric measurement using this technique is discussed. The
HP-8510 network analyzer is used to measure the reflection coefficient of dielectric
posts in an X-band waveguide sample holder. Metallic and known dielectric posts are
used for both SI1 calibration and validation of the dielectric measurement technique.

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