High-Precision Complementary Metamaterial Sensor Using Slotted Microstrip Transmission Line

Metamaterial-based microwave sensor having novel and compact structure of the resonators and the slotted microstrip transmission line is proposed for highly precise measurement of dielectric properties of the materials under test (MUTs). The proposed sensor is designed and simulated on Rogers' substrate RO4003C by using the ANSYS HFSS software. A single and accumulative notch depth of-44.29 dB in the transmission coefficient (S21) is achieved at the resonant frequency of 5.15 GHz. The negative constitutive parameters (permittivity and permeability) are extracted from the S-parameters which are the basic property of metamaterials or left handed materials (LHMs). The proposed sensor is fabricated and measured through the PNA-X (N5247A). The sensitivity analysis is performed by placing various standard dielectric materials onto the sensor and measuring the shift in the resonant frequencies of the MUTs. A parabolic equation of the proposed sensor is formulated to approximate the resonant frequency and the relative permittivity of the MUTs. A very strong agreement among the simulated, measured, and calculated results is found which reveals that the proposed sensor is a highly precise sensor for the characterization of dielectric properties of the MUTs. Error analysis is performed to determine the accuracy of the proposed sensor. A very small percentage of error (0.81%) and a very low standard deviation are obtained which indicate high accuracy of the proposed sensor.