Study on moisture content in animal fats using Six-Port Reflectometer (SPR)

The existing microwave instruments such as Performance Network Analyzer (PNA) or Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) required a sophisticated hardware set up and expensive. The Six Port Reflectometer (SPR) which provides a simple, fast, inexpensive and more portability in design was introduced. Since there are many methods to implement the Six-Port Reflectometer such as using directional coupler, five port junction (ring or disc) and three coupled lines, therefore, this paper presents the development of the five port ring junction which was simulated and designed by using the Microwave Office (MWO) software. The simulations of the ring junction consist of the modification of the length, radius and width of the ring junction microstrip line to produce the ideal and optimum specification that reduces the mismatch error. The developed Six Port Reflectometer (SPR) which, operating at a frequency of 2GHz was fabricated and it was utilized for the measurement of reflection coefficient, S
₁₁
. As for the preliminary test, chicken fat was used to determine its moisture content at various percentages. The fresh chicken fats were collected from the market and the moisture content of fat samples was manipulated by using oven drying technique. The results show that the reflection coefficient, S
₁₁
values varied at different level of moisture content.