Design of Complementary Meander Shaped Resonator for Adulteration Testing

A new compact planar RF sensor design is realized to assess the purity of edible oils. The shape of the sensor structure is designed to realize an improved sensitivity and quality factor. The sensor structure is quite compact as it utilizes the meander shape tropology. The fabricated sensor prototype provides quite a high-quality factor (298) than that of the conventional design of electrically small resonant sensors (128). Also, the obtained absolute sensitivity around resonant frequency (801MHz) is substantially higher than the literature available data (111 MHz). The sensor provides a 275 KHz shift in the resonant frequency for 20% adulteration of commercially available cheap oil. Moreover, it is found that the sensor can produce nearly 65 KHz shift in resonant frequency for a 5% contamination level, which is well above its repeatability limit of 12.5 KHz.