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Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna Sensor for Non-Invasive Glucose

Sensing Application

Conference Paper · March 2019

DOI: 10.1109/SPIN.2019.8711633

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2019 6th IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks (SPIN), India

Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna Sensor for

Non-invasive Glucose Sensing Application
Md Nazmul Hasan1*, Saheda Tamanna2, Padam Singh3, and Md Danish Nadeem4, Mahabaleshwar Rudramuni5
1R&D Section, Tensorbundle Lab.
2Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh.
3Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, G. B. Pant Govt. Engineering College,

Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India.

4Department of Electronics Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dhanbad, India.
5Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany.

*Corresponding author’s e-mail: mnazmulh@ieee.org.

Abstract— A compact cylindrical dielectric resonator
antenna is presented for non-invasive glucose sensing. The
proposed antenna sensor consists of an Alumina ceramic
dielectric resonator fed by a 50  microstrip line. For sensing
the glucose, the thumb of the subject is placed on the dielectric
resonator. The permittivity of the blood inside the thumb
depends on the glucose concentration. Therefore, the change of
the input impedance of the proposed sensor is proportional to
change of blood permittivity caused by variable glucose
concentration, translating in a shift of resonance frequency. The
concept is validated by simulated results obtained in full-wave
electromagnetic simulator CST Microwave Studio. Moreover, a
3D electromagnetic model of human thumb is also proposed.
The blood layer is modeled by Cole-Cole model. Additionally,
the variations in the thumb placement is also evaluated and it is
shown that the resonance frequency (4.725 GHz) of the proposed
sensor is not altered much by variations in thumb placement.
The sensitivity of the proposed sensor is 2.81 kHz/mgdL-1. The
size of the proposed sensor is 60×60×1.52 mm3 that makes it
suitable for hand-held use.
Keywords—Cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna, high-Q
resonator, Cole-Cole material, non-invasive glucose sensor, 3D
electromagnetic thumb model.
I. INTRODUCTION
Diabetes patients are advised to monitor the blood glucose
level continuously. However, most of the commercially
available existing glucose sensors use a tiny needle to take out
the blood sample for glucose measurement, which causes
discomforts to the patients [1]. Recent years have seen
vehement research efforts in the scientific community to
develop non-invasive electronic glucose sensor. By using
optical signals, photoacoustic glucose sensor is recently
proposed [2]. Based on the fact that diabetes patients have
higher concentration of acetone in their breaths, breathing
sensors are developed to measure glucose level [3, 4].
However, for low cost application, planar microwave
frequency based glucose sensors are the ideal candidates.
Microwave high-Q resonators have been dominantly applied
in the non-invasive glucose detection sensor design [5−10].
The permittivity of the blood changes with respect to the
concentration of glucose. However, this small change of
permittivity of the blood with respect to glucose concentration
inside the tissue is very challenging to detect. Since high-Q
resonators have a sharp resonance frequency, any change in
the surrounding permittivity of the dielectric material (e.g.
blood) will be reflected in the shift of resonance frequency of
the resonator. Spiral resonators of various shapes [5−7], split
ring resonator [8], and microstrip patch antenna based
resonators [9, 10] are reported to be used as non-invasive
glucose sensors.
In this paper, a novel low-cost microwave resonator based
non-invasive glucose sensor is proposed. The proposed sensor
consists of a cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA)
operating at 4.16 GHz. The proposed non-invasive sensor can
detect the glucose concentration in human blood if the
subject’s thumb is placed on the sensor. The sensor is
simulated with electromagnetic (EM) model of human thumb
tissue. Cole-Cole model is used to model the complex
permittivity of the blood as a function of glucose concentration
in all simulations to accurately define the electromagnetic
model. Moreover, the effects of variation of thumb position on
the proposed CDRA sensor is also presented. It is shown that
the resonance frequency of the proposed sensor does not
change much even if there is spatial variation of thumb
placement. The proposed sensor can be an excellent candidate
for non-invasive monitoring of blood glucose concentration of
diabetes patients. The simulations and EM modeling are
performed in full-wave EM solver CST Microwave Studio.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the CDRA sensor design and results. Section III
presents a detailed EM model of human thumb based on Cole-
Cole model. Section IV presents the simulated results of the
proposed sensor for various blood glucose concentration
followed by a discussion on secondary effects such as thumb
position variation. Concluding remarks are presented in
section V.
II. SENSOR ANTENNA GEOMETRY
The proposed CDRA sensor has a cylindrical dielectric
resonator fed by a 50  microstrip line as shown in Fig. 1 (a).
Alumina ceramic, with a permittivity of 9.9 and a loss tangent
of 0.0001 is employed as the dielectric resonator material. The
height (H) and diameter (2R) of the CDR are 10 mm and 20
mm, respectively. Rogers RT/Duroid 5880, having a thickness
of 1.52 mm, a dielectric constant of 2.2, and a loss tangent of
0.0009, is used as the antenna substrate. Metal layer thickness
of 0.035 mm is considered in microstrip line and ground plane,
which is equivalent to 1 oz. copper on standard PCB board.
Two grooves separated by a distance of G, is used on top of
the dielectric resonator, as shown in Fig. 1(b), to help align the
thumb on the resonator properly. The side-view of the
proposed sensor is shown in Fig. 1(c). The optimum
dimensions of the proposed CDRA are W = L = 60 mm, R = used to electromagnetically model human tissue materials as
10 mm, H = 10 mm, J = 12 mm, G = 15 mm, T = 4.65 mm, a function of frequency [11].
and D = 40 mm. Based on Cole-Cole model, the complex permittivity (𝜀̂)
The proposed CDRA sensor has a resonance frequency at of blood, which depends on the frequency, can be expressed
4.16 GHz, with a −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 3.9 – 4.53 by (1), where,  is the angular frequency and 𝜎𝑖 is
GHz as shown in Fig. 2(a). The radiation pattern is broadside, conductivity [12−14].
with maximum radiation occurring at the top having a
directivity of 7.08 dBi, as shown in Fig. 2(b). ∆𝜀𝑛 𝜎𝑖
𝜀̂(𝜔) = 𝜀 + ∑ (1−𝛼 )
+ (1)
𝑛 1 + (𝑗𝜔𝜏𝑛 ) 𝑛 𝑗𝜔𝜀0

To quantify the blood permittivity dependency as a

function glucose concentration, we have defined the blood as
a single pole (n=1) “Cole-Cole material” and added the
corresponding values of high frequency permittivity ( 𝜀 ),
magnitude of the dispersion (∆𝜀𝑛 ), relaxation time constant
( 𝜏𝑛 ), dispersion-broadening parameter ( 𝛼𝑛 = 0.1) in CST
Microwave Studio for various glucose concentrations ranging
from 0−16,000 mg/dL.

Fig. 1. The proposed CDRA sensor geometry (a) top view,

(b) perspective view, and (c) side view.

Fig. 2. Results of the proposed CDRA sensor antenna (a) Fig. 3. 3D electromagnetic model of thumb tissue in CST
reflection coefficient plot, (b) 3D radiation pattern plot. Microwave Studio.

After defining the blood as Cole-Cole material, a three-

III. ELECTROMAGNETIC MODELING OF HUMAN THUMB dimensional layer based simplified human thumb EM model
is designed in CST Microwave Studio as shown in Fig. 3. The
This section presents a detailed treatment on the issue of
EM model consists of skin, fat, bone, blood and nail layers of
electromagnetic modeling of human thumb. Unlike the
approximately realistic dimension for an adult. Only the
homogeneous dielectric materials, human tissues are
finger-tip of human thumb is modeled in Fig. 3 to focus on
composed of several layers of complicated inhomogeneous
primary variable e.g. permittivity of blood and glucose
mixture of bio-organic materials of different electromagnetic
concentration dependency. The dimension of the thumb tissue
properties. Voxel based electromagnetic modeling of human
model is 15 mm × 25 mm × 12.3 mm. As it is mentioned in
tissues are dominantly employed in computational bio-
the earlier part of this section that in non-invasive glucose
electromagnetics research areas. However, the core theme of
sensing, the permittivity of the blood depends on the glucose
non-invasive glucose sensing is to detect any minute change
concentration and the frequency, therefore only blood layers
of permittivity of human blood owing to the variation of
in Fig. 3. are modelled as Cole-Cole materials. the rest of the
glucose concentration. It implies that the complex
layers in Fig. 3 are defined as homogeneous dielectric
permittivity of the blood is a function of glucose
material characterized by a fixed permittivity. The thickness
concentration. This is the fundamental point we must
(t) of each layer and corresponding permittivity (r) are also
consider during any electromagnetic modeling related to
shown in Table I.
glucose sensing of blood.
While voxel-based approach can provide excellent three- TABLE I. THICKNESS AND PERMITTIVITY OF INDIVIDUAL LAYER IN
dimensional geometric models of human thumb but the THE HUMAN THUMB TISSUE ELECTROMAGNETIC MODEL
dependency between the complex permittivity of blood and
Parameter Skin Fat Blood Bone Nail
glucose concentration would not be possible to take into t (mm) 1 0.5 2.5 4 0.3
account in voxel model. The Cole-Cole model is extensively r 30 5.5 Cole-Cole 20 3
 IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Glucose Detection
The proposed CDRA sensor has a dielectric resonator with
a resonance frequency of 4.16 GHz, as discussed in section II.
Since the reflection coefficient (|S11|) of any antenna depends
on the input impedance (Zin), the change in resonance is
expected to happen if the input impedance of the antenna
changes. The mathematical relationship between reflection
coefficient (|S11|) and input impedance (Zin) an be expressed
by (2), where Z0 = characteristic impedance, which is usually
50  for almost all the microwave devices and components.
𝑍𝑖𝑛 −𝑍0
|𝑆11 | = 20 𝑙𝑜𝑔10 | | (2)
𝑍𝑖𝑛 +𝑍0

When the thumb is placed on the proposed CDRA, as

shown in Fig. 4, the thumb will alter the input impedance of
the CDRA, causing a change in resonance frequency from
4.16 GHz to 4.725 GHz, as shown in the reflection coefficient Fig. 6. Electric field distributions of the proposed sensor
plots of Fig. 5. The thumb used in this case contains blood with loaded with human thumb in different cut planes (a) cut
0 mg/dL of glucose concentration. The electric field (E) plane parallel to thumb placement, (b) cut plane normal to
distributions at the resonance frequency (4.725 GHz) are thumb placement.
shown in Fig. 6(a) and Fig. 6(b), respectively in two different
cut planes to investigate the fields inside the human thumb
model. The field distributions show that the thumb is exposed
inside a strong E-fields region in both cut planes. E-fields are
parallel along the cut plane that is parallel to the placement of
thumb as shown in Fig. 6(a). On the contrary, fields are
perpendicular on the cut plane that is normal to the placement
of thumb as shown in Fig. 6(b).
Next, several simulations are performed with variation of
blood glucose level of the thumb, ranging from 0 mg/dL to
16,000 mg/dL. The reflection coefficient plot for each case of
glucose concentration is shown in Fig. 7. The plot shows the
Fig. 7. Reflection coefficient plot of the proposed CDRA
resonance frequency of the proposed sensor changes with
sensor for various glucose concentrations.
different levels of glucose concentration as listed in Table II.
TABLE II. RESONANCE FREQUENCY OF THE PROPOSED CDRA
SENSOR FOR VARIOUS GLUCOSE CONCENTRATIONS
Glucose
concentration 0 250 500 1000
(mg/dL)
Resonance
frequency 4.725 4.722 4.725 4.725
(GHz)
Fig. 4. The proposed CDRA sensor with and without Glucose
simplified EM thumb model. concentration 2000 4000 8000 1600
(mg/dL)
Resonance
frequency 4.728 4.734 4.743 4.77
(GHz)

The resonance frequencies of the proposed CDRA sensor,

Fig. 5. The reflection coefficient of the proposed CDRA
sensor with and without simplified EM thumb model.
as shown in Table II, exhibits almost linear variation for higher
variation of glucose concentration in blood, as expected. It is
also noticeable from Table II that resonance frequencies of the
proposed CDRA sensor for 0 mg/dL, 500 mg/dL and 1000
mg/dL remain same however, the magnitude of reflection
coefficient are −20.94 dB, −20.6 dB and −20.42 dB,
respectively. Based on the frequency shifts for various glucose
concentration, we can calculate the sensitivity (s) of the
proposed sensor by (2).
 ∆𝑓
𝑠= 𝑀𝐻𝑧/𝑚𝑔𝑑𝐿−1 (2)
∆𝑐
where, f = net frequency shift (MHz) and c = net
concentration change of glucose (mg/dL). From Table II, the
sensitivity can be found as follows,
4770 − 4725
𝑠= 𝑀𝐻𝑧/𝑚𝑔𝑑𝐿−1
16000 − 0
𝑠 = 2.81 𝑘𝐻𝑧/𝑚𝑔𝑑𝐿−1
B. Effects of the Position of the Thumb on the Sensor
This sub-section outlines the effects of the placement
variation of the thumb on the proposed CDRA sensor. To limit
the placement variation along x-axis, two grooves are used in
the dielectric resonator. However, the thumb of the subject
may slide along y-axis. Therefore, four different offset
positions along y-axis have been simulated as depicted in Fig.
8. The set of spatial y-coordinates used for simulation d = {−2,
−1, 1, 2}, and O is the reference position denoting reference
point (0,0). Hence, a total range of offset distance simulated is
4 mm, as indicated by Fig. 8. The reflection coefficient plots
for thumb placement variations are shown in Fig. 9. The
resonance frequency does not change much, however, the
magnitude of the reflection coefficient changes almost 5 dB.
Therefore, it can be assumed safely that the variation of the
thumb placement on the proposed sensor does not have any
significant effect on its operating resonance frequency and the
proposed sensor should be able to provide almost in the similar
order of resonance frequency regardless of the thumb
placement on the CDRA sensor.
Fig. 8. The thumb position variation along y-axis.
Fig. 9. Effect of the thumb position variation on the
proposed sensor.
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V. CONCLUSION
This work presents a CDRA based glucose sensor antenna
that can be used to measure glucose concentration in blood by
placing the thumb on the sensor platform. The operating
frequency of the proposed sensor is 4.725 GHz. Simulated
model shows that the proposed sensor performs well in the
case of thumb placement variation, making it a suitable
candidate for low-cost constant glucose monitoring sensor for
diabetes patients.
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