2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)
Loss Tangent Effect on the Accurate Design of
Microwave Sensors for Blood Glucose Monitoring
Sandra Costanzo
DIMES – University of Calabria, Via P. Bucci, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy, email: costanzo@dimes.unical.it
Abstract— The effect of loss tangent variation is properly
faced in this work for the accurate design of microwave sensors
to be applied in the non-invasive monitoring of blood glucose.
Bio-antenna optimization is performed by accurately
considering the complex permittivity variation of the biological
radiation medium. At this purpose, preliminary dielectric data
are experimentally collected by using a standard open-ended
coaxial probe. Then, the above complex dispersive data are
exploited to optimize the antenna dimensions. Return loss
measurements on water-glucose solutions with different
concentrations are reported to prove the strong enhancement
in the prediction of the resonant shift due to the variation of
glucose level, when properly considering the loss tangent
variation. Preliminary simulation results on blood are also
reported.
Index Terms—Microwave sensor, blood glucose
monitoring, dielectric characterization.
I. INTRODUCTION
The adoption of microwave sensors for biomedical
applications has been recently proposed in literature [1], and
it is largely diffusing nowadays, as enabling a continuous,
non-destructive testing feature. Diabete is one of the most
prominent disease arising the attention for reliable
continuous monitoring technology. Patients are required to
frequently control their blood glucose levels for a proper
management of their pathology, thus microwave sensors can
be helpfully adopted to perform a continuous monitoring,
while improving at the same time the lifestyle of the affected
people.
The accurate design of microwave sensors exposed to
biological tissues is a challenging task, as the antenna
requirements strongly differ from those encountered in the
case of conventional free-space radiation. First of all, a ‘de-
tuning’ effect is observed with respect to the free-space
operation condition, when the antenna is placed on the body,
but the most challenging issue is given by the dispersive
feature of the biological environment, causing a strong
frequency dependence of complex permittivity, to be taken
into account when performing the antenna design. Various
configurations of microwave sensors for non-invasive blood
glucose monitoring exist in literature, essentially exploiting
the resonance and/or transmission variation in response to
changes in the blood glucose concentration (BCG) [2-3].
The importance of an accurate complex permittivity
model for blood glucose solutions is highlighted in some
recent works [4], however most of the proposed antennas
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design are performed without considering the proper
frequency variation of the complex permittivity relative to
the biological medium. As a matter of fact, in the most
advanced works, only the dielectric constant variation of
blood when changing the BGC level is considered in the
antenna design, while the dependency of microwave sensor
response from the loss tangent variation of blood is not
properly faced. This important effect is accurately taken into
account in the present contribution, by demonstrating its
strong importance in the prediction of the sensor resonance
shift due to the BGC level variation.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION AND DESIGN
A very simple antenna configuration is assumed in the
present work, consisting of an inset-fed resonant patch
working in the Industrial, Scientific, Medical (ISM) band,
around 2.4 GHz. A high permittivity substrate (Arlon AR
1000, εr = 10) is considered to reduce as much as possible
the dependency of environmental properties. A feeding line
is also assumed to easily realize the antenna matching with
the high permittivity biological medium. As discussed in the
introduction, the synthesis of the microwave sensor is
performed by considering the proper frequency variation of
the complex permittivity relative to the radiation
environment, not only in terms of dielectric constant, but
also in terms of loss tangent, modeling the losses increase
when placing the sensor in contact with the body.
For validation purposes, a water-glucose solution is
assumed as radiation medium, and its dielectric properties
are preliminarily measured for different glucose
concentrations. Complex permittivity measurements are
performed in the Microwave Laboratory at University of
Calabria, by adopting the Anritsu VectorStar Vector
Network Analyzer and the open-ended coaxial probe Speag
DAK. The measured behavior of the dielectric constant and
the loss tangent versus frequency, for different water-glucose
solutions with different concentrations are reported in Figs. 1
and 2, respectively. The above measured complex dielectric
data are then considered to properly optimize the dimensions
of the inset-fed microwave sensor, for guaranteeing the
matching condition within the prescribed ISM band, and the
realized resonant antenna is illustrated in Fig. 3. When
compared to existing configurations in literature, a
significant reduction in the antenna size can be also observed
[3], [5].
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 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)
Fig. 1. Measured dielectric constant vs. frequency for different water-
glucose solutions.
Fig. 2. Measured loss tangent vs. frequency for different water-glucose
solutions.
15 mm
47 mm
Fig. 3. Realized ISM band microwave sensor for glucose monitoring.
III. WATER-GLUCOSE SOLUTIONS: EXPERIMENTAL TESTS
Return loss measurements performed with the realized
microwave sensor on water-glucose solutions show the
expected shift of the resonant frequency when changing the
glucose concentration (GC) (Fig. 4). But the most
significant result is illustrated in Fig. 5, where the measured
resonant shift versus the GC is compared with the predicted
(Ansys Designer) data. In particular, it can be observed how
the measured data result to be more similar to the simulated
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ones, when the variation of the loss tangent is properly
considered in the simulation model, thus confirming the
accuracy enhancement in the microwave sensor design, in
this last case.
Fig. 4. Measured return loss on water-glucose solutions with different
concentrations.
Fig. 5. Resonant frequency shift vs. glucose concentration (comparison
between measured and simulated data with loss tangent variable/constant).
IV. BLOOD-GLUCOSE SOLUTIONS: NUMERICAL TESTS
As demonstrated by the experimental tests on the
glucose-water solutions, the reliability of continuous
monitoring microwave sensors is strongly related to the
accurate relationship between the glucose concentration and
the dielectric properties of the solutions, considered not only
in terms of dielectric constant, but also in terms of loss
tangent. As preliminary test of the proposed approach on
blood-glucose solutions, numerical simulations are
performed on Ansys software, by considering the realized
antenna of Fig. 3 irradiating into blood medium. The
dispersive behavior of the radiation environment is properly
taken into account by exploiting the Cole-Cole model
proposed in [6], where the complex dielectric properties of
blood (εr, tanδ) are estimated as a function of both BCG and
frequency. The simulated return loss obtained by assuming
the full variation of blood complex permittivity (εr, tanδ) for
various BCG levels, is reported in Fig. 6, while the same
parameter behavior, simulated by assuming the only
variation of the dielectric constant εr is shown in Fig. 7. As
expected, a more significant variation in terms of frequency
 2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP)

shift as well as in terms of return loss magnitude is obtained, REFERENCES

when assuming also the loss tangent variation, thus leading
to an increased sensitivity of the microwave sensor.
Fig. 6. Simulated return loss on blood-glucose solutions with different
concentrations (no tanδ variation).
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Fig. 7. Simulated return loss on blood-glucose solutions with different

concentrations (tand variation).

V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

The effect of loss tangent variation has been properly
considered in this work for the accurate design of reliable
microwave sensor performing a continuous monitoring of
blood glucose level. A simple inset-fed patch antenna
configuration has been assumed to demonstrate the design
principle, first by experimental measurements on water-
glucose solutions, and then by performing preliminary
numerical simulations on blood solutions with different
concentrations. At this purpose, the Cole-Cole model has
been adopted to predict the behavior of complex permittivity
versus frequency, at different glucose concentrations. Both
experimental as well as simulated data have successfully
confirmed that loss tangent variation of the blood medium
should be properly taken into account, in order to achieve
reliable results.
Concerning future developments, simulations will be
performed on a more realistic phantom, including all
biological layers, and a mathematical model relating the
frequency shift as well as the return loss magnitude variation
versus BCG changes will be derived.

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