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Dielectric measurement using a coaxial resonator opened to a waveguide below

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Article in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement · May 1997

DOI: 10.1109/19.571898 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 46, NO. 2, APRIL 1997 511

Dielectric Measurements Using a Coaxial Resonator

Opened to a Waveguide Below Cut-Off
Bogdan A. Galwas, Jerzy K. Piotrowski, Member, IEEE, and Jerzy Skulski

Abstract—A model of a quarter-wavelength coaxial resonator

opened to a semi-infinite circular waveguide below cut-off is
presented in the paper. A full-wave analysis of the transition
between coaxial-line and circular waveguide was used. The anal-
ysis was based on a mode-matching formulation. The circular
waveguide is filled with a dielectric material. As a consequence,
the parameters of the resonator, resonant frequency, quality
factor and resonant transmission, change in relation to the com-
plex permittivity of the material. A fully automated L-band
microwave system with resonator sensor was fabricated and
used for measurements of the permittivity of low-loss and high-
loss powdered materials. Results obtained using the system are
compared with those of other method.
Index Terms— Automated measurement systems, coaxial res-
Fig. 1. Geometry of a quarter-wavelength coaxial resonator opened to a
onators, dielectric measurements, electrodynamics, microwaves, semi-infinite circular waveguide below cut-off.
sensors.

I. INTRODUCTION other parts of the resonator model, which are expected to be

independent of the permittivity of the dielectric sample, are

M ICROWAVES are widely used in sensors for dielectric

materials characterization [1]-[4]. When the microwave
resonator is used as a sensor, the material to be measured is
experimentally determined.

A. Full-Wave Formulation for the Coaxial

introduced into contact with some part of the electromagnetic
field of the resonator. The important advantages of these types
of sensors are the high sensitivity and resolution [4].
The opened ended coaxial line resonator is well known
as a useful tool for dielectric permittivity measurements [4].
The previously described solutions are based on coaxial line
opened to the half-space. In such a case the effect of radiation
from resonator to open space strongly influences on quality
factor. The placing of dielectric sample inside a circular
waveguide below cut-off removes the effect of radiation to
open space and, in consequence, increases quality factors and
measurement resolution.
II. QUARTER-WAVELENGHT COAXIAL RESONATOR OPENED
TO THE CIRCULAR WAVEGUIDE BELOW CUT-OFF
The quarter-wavelength coaxial resonator, opened to a semi-
infinite circular waveguide, as shown in Fig. 1, is modeled
in order to predict the relationship between the resonator
parameters and the complex permittivity ( ) of any dielectric
sample in the waveguide below cut-off.
The coaxial line-circular waveguide transition, built in the
resonator, is studied using a full-wave analysis. An expression
for the unknown, normalized to the characteristic admittance
of the coaxial line, input admittance (y ) of the TEM mode at
the T plane is derived. After the y is accurately calculated,
Line—Circular Waveguide Transition
The geometry of the transition, which is a part of resonator
shown in Fig. 1, is formed by a coaxial line and a semi-infinite
circular waveguide which consists of two dielectric regions.
The radii of the inner and the outer conductors of an air-filled
( , ) coaxial line are and , respectively. A dielectric
spacer of the complex permittivity and thickness is placed
in the circular waveguide of radius . The second region is
filled by a dielectric sample of unknown complex permittivity
. Both materials are linear, isotropic, homogeneous, and
nonmagnetic. The analysis of the transition has been carried
out with the simplifications that the conductivity of conductors
is infinite and only the TEM mode with the amplitude is
incident upon the T plane.
For the electromagnetic field inside the coaxial line, because
of rotational symmetry, only higher order TM modes may
be found when a TEM mode is incident. As a consequence of
this, only rotationally symmetrical TM modes are excited in
the circular waveguide. Following the notation of Marcuvitz’s
Waveguide Handbook [5], the total electric and magnetic field
components transverse to the z direction at the T plane in the
coaxial line are expressed as
(1a)

Manuscript received June 20, 1996; revised October 1, 1996.

The authors are with the Institute of Microelectronics and Optoelectronics,
Warsaw University of Technology, 00-665 Warsaw, Poland
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9456(97)01582-9. (1b)
0018–9456/97$10.00  1997 IEEE
512 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 46, NO. 2, APRIL 1997

where is the unknown reflection coefficient of the TEM

mode, is the amplitude of the TM modes,
and are wave admittances of the TEM and
the TM modes, respectively. is the propagation constant
of the th TM mode.
The coaxial line electric and magnetic field modal vec-
tors are and , respectively. These orthonormal
eigenvectors are expressed as and
for the TEM mode with ,
and
with and
for the TM modes, where and are Bessel
(a)
functions and is the discrete eigenvalue associated with
eigenfunction .
Analogously, the total transverse EM field components at
the T plane in the circular waveguide are

(2a)

(2b)

where is the reflection coefficient, is the unknown

amplitude at the T plane, is wave admittance
of the TM modes and is the propagation constant in
spacer layer. The orthonormal eigenvectors and for
the circular waveguide are with (b)
and , where eigenvalues Fig. 2. The reflection coefficient 0" as a function of frequency for
are determined by the boundary condition " = "o (a) and " = (4 0 0:5j )"o (b) with a = 20 mm, b = 5:5
The is related to the reflection coefficient of the 0
mm,d = 0:8 mm, "s = (8:3 0:007j )"o , M = 3 and N = 6.
th TM mode at the plane by the relation
where , first N TM modes in the waveguide. With the assumption that
is the wave admittance of the th TM the short-circuit cannot be placed at the T plane (3) has been
mode and is the propagation constant in the region of normalized to the total amplitude of TEM mode at this plane.
the dielectric sample. Next, the substitution of (3b) in (3c) leads to the following set
Matching the tangential EM field across the aperture at of simultaneous linear equations
the plane and using the orthogonality properties of
eigenvectors in relations (1) and (2) results in the following
set of equations:
(4)
(3a)
where and
are the unknown normalized total
amplitude and input wave admittance of the th TM mode
at the T plane, respectively. The solution of (4) by a typical
(3b) numerical subroutine determines these amplitudes.
The normalization of (3a) yields a relation for the admit-
tance as follows:

(3c)
where as well as
are coupling coefficients between the th TM mode in the
waveguide and the TEM mode as well as the th TM mode
in the coaxial line, respectively.
The infinite series (3) may be truncated by taking into
consideration the first M TM modes in the coaxial line and the
(5)
The described solution may be applied for the multilayer
structure in the waveguide region and only the expression
for must be appropriately modified. Exemplary frequency
characteristics of at the T plane are shown in Fig. 2.
GALWAS et al: DIELECTRIC MEASUREMENTS USING A COAXIAL RESONATOR
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit model of the quarter-wavelength resonator opened
to the circular waveguide.
B. Model of the Resonator
The arrangement of the resonator under consideration has
been presented in Fig. 1. At the input (plane T ) and the output
(plane T ) of the cavity two 50 SMA connectors, which are
schematically shown between planes T T and T T
in Fig. 1, are combined with the coupling loops. The size of
loops should be appropriately large to ensure strong magnetic
coupling in order to obtain not too high transmission loss of the
resonator at the resonant frequency when high-lossy dielectric
material is placed in the circular waveguide. The equivalent
circuit model of the resonator is shown in Fig. 3. In the
cavity, the determination of power loss due to the nonperfectly
conducting walls of the coaxial line is essential for calculation
of the loaded quality factor . Thus, the propagation constant
and the characteristic impedance of the coaxial line as
well as the impedance of this line end wall are complex and
described by classical relations given in [6]. The coaxial line-
circular waveguide transition is represented by the admittance
. The two coupling loops are modeled in Fig. 3
by transformer ratios susceptances and
reactances . The transformer ratios are proportional
to the coupling of the coaxial line to the SMA connectors. The
connectors are represented by the coaxial lines of the length
with the characteritic impedance and the phase
constant . Since the resonator has been strongly coupled, the
evanescent modes appearing in the surroundings of the loops
should be taken into consideration. This effect is modeled by
susceptances and reactances which may
be determined from measurements.
III. PRACTICAL SOLUTION OF
MEASUREMENT SENSOR SYSTEM
The measurement system with resonator sensor has been
fabricated. The system should allow one to measure resonant
frequency and quality factor of resonator very accu-
rately, and from their small changes obtain information about
the dielectric sample.
The block diagram of the system is shown in the Fig. 4.
The general parts of the system are: synthesized source of
microwave signals, resonators, receiving unit, microprocessor
control unit and external computer. The source of L-band
microwave signals is coupled to the measurement resonator
513
Fig. 4. Block diagram of system. MR (measurement resonator), RR (refer-
ence resonator), RP (reference power channel).
MR with dielectric sample, the reference resonator RR and to
the reference power channel RP. The reference resonator RR
is the same as the measurement resonator MR but without a
dielectric sample. The transmitted power is measured by the
receiving unit. Simultaneous measurements of power transmit-
ted by the three channels makes measured changes of and
independent of operation temperature.
The action of the source is controlled by the microprocessor
control unit. The control unit collects the digital data on
power transmitted by the three channels. After finishing a
measurement procedure the information is transmitted to a
central computer. Extraction of resonator parameters ( , )
are obtained from measurements of power transmission by the
resonator at many frequencies and by the proper calculation
procedure.
IV. EXAMPLE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The measurement system was used with the coaxial res-
onator of dimensions mm, mm, and
mm. First, a short-circuit was placed in the T plane
creating a half-wavelength resonator in order to determine the
conductivity of gold plated metallic walls and to estimate
the parameters of the coupling system. The measurements
have indicated that differences between loops are negligible,
conductivity of walls is S/m and values of the
parameters are 10.3, 45.4 , 0.024 S, re-
spectively. The ceramic spacer 0.8-mm thick with permittivity
was used. In order to reduce the
resonant frequency detuning range and degradation of quality
factor an additional 1-mm thick air-filled layer was formed
between the coaxial line and spacer in both resonators of the
system. The measured resonant frequency and the quality
factor of the RR resonator are 1.165 GHz and 110.5,
respectively.
To validate the model of the resonator sensor, powdered
silica as well as seven powdered silica–graphite mixtures,
with concentration of graphite from 2% to 14%, have been
measured. The MR resonator was positioned vertically and
30-mm thick layer (due to the fact that granular materials
are very pressure sensitive) of the material under test was
poured into the circular waveguide. Fig. 5 shows the measured
coefficients of detuning and quality factor
degradation of the resonator. On
514 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 46, NO. 2, APRIL 1997
Fig. 5. Detuning (p) and quality factor degradation (q) coefficients of the
MR resonator measured for powdered silica–graphite mixtures. Percentages
indicate concentration of graphite.
Fig. 6. Calculated permittivity for silica–graphite mixtures for measurements
in Fig. 5 and HP 85070 dielectric coaxial probe measurements.
the basis of the developed resonator sensor model the relative
permittivity for the sample powders has been calculated and
the results are presented in Fig. 6. together with the HP 85070
dielectric coaxial probe measurements.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Previously described quarter-wavelength resonator sensors
are based on coaxial line opened to the half-space. In such a
case the effect of radiation from line to open space strongly
influences the resonator quality factor. The placing of dielectric
sample inside a circular waveguide below cut-off removes
the effect of radiation and therefore increases quality factors
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and measurement sensitivity. The developed system makes
possible the industrial characterization of dielectric materials.
The system may be used to measure moisture in granular
materials (e.g., sand, concrete, grain), unburnt carbon content
in ashes as well as biological tissues, chemical liquids, etc.
Practically the system is able to measure on-line. It is possible
to join several independent resonator sensors to a central
computer and to create a proper measurement network.
REFERENCES
[1] D. Misra, “A quasistatic analysis of open-ended coaxial lines,” IEEE
Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 35, pp. 925–928, Oct. 1987.
[2] S. S. Stuchly, C. L. Sibbald, and J. M. Anderson, “A new aperture
admittance model for open-ended waveguides,” IEEE Trans. Microwave
Theory Tech., vol. 42, pp. 192–198, Feb. 1994.
[3] C. L. Li and K. M. Chen, “Determination of electromagnetic prop-
erties of materials using flanged open-ended coaxial probe—full-wave
analysis,” IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 44, pp. 19–27, Feb. 1995.
[4] E. Nyfors and P. Vainikainen, Industrial Microwave Sensors. Nor-
wood, MA: Artech House, 1989.
[5] N. Marcuvitz, Waveguide Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951.
[6] T. Morawski and W. Gwarek, Theory of Electromagnetic Field. War-
saw, Poland: WNT, 1978 (in Polish).
Bogdan A. Galwas was born in Poland on October
31, 1938. He received the M.Sc. degree in 1962,
the Ph.D. degree in 1969, and the habilitated doc-
tors degree in 1976, all in electronic engineering,
from Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw,
Poland.
In 1962, he joined the Faculty of Electronics,
Warsaw University, as Lecturer. In 1986 he was
promoted to Full Professor. His current research
interests are microwave measurement systems, mod-
eling, designing and measurement of microwave
oscillators, theory and designing of microwave resonator sensors. He is the
author of more than 100 scientific papers and two books in these areas.
Jerzy K. Piotrowski (M’89) was born in Tomaszów
Mazowiecki, Poland, on May 10, 1952. He received
the M. Sc. and Ph.D. (summa cum laude) degrees
in electronics engineering from Warsaw University
of Technology, Warsaw, Poland, in 1975 and 1988,
respectively.
He has been with the Institute of Microelec-
tronics and Optoelectronics, Warsaw University of
Technology, since 1975. From 1982 to 1984, he
spent 20 months with the Technische Universitaet,
Braunschweig, Germany, where he was engaged in
the study of finline technique. He has published papers on Gunn oscillators,
finlines, and coplanar waveguides. His areas of special interest include
microwave and lightwave integrated circuits, computational electromagnetics,
and microwave sensors.
Jerzy Skulski was born in Poland, on December 8,
1945. He received the M. Sc. degree in electronic
engineering from Warsaw University of Technology,
Warsaw, Poland, in 1970.
In 1971, he joined the Electronics Faculty, War-
saw University of Technology, as Assistant Profes-
sor. He is now a Researcher. He has been engaged
in the research and development of microwave am-
plifiers, generators, and measurement systems. His
current research interest is in the area of microwave
sensors.