Maximum-sensitivity method for minimizing uncertainty in the measurements of permittivity of a cylindrical dielectric sample in a rectangular waveguide

A novel and efficient methodology is proposed for reducing measurement uncertainty associated with the dielectric constant of low-loss materials. The experimental setup consists of two H-plane cylindrical rods located in a rectangular waveguide. One of the rods has the unknown dielectric constant to be extracted, while the other dielectric rod whose dielectric constant is known in advance and serves as a tool for altering the shape of the dependence of the absolute value of the reflection coefficient on the dielectric constant in such a way that the resulting curve exhibits more rapid variations in the range of possible values of the dielectric constant of the post being characterized. The distance between the rods, radius of the optimizing rod, and position offset of the optimizing post serve as optimization parameters to be adjusted so that measurement uncertainty could be reduced which is confirmed by the results of numerical modeling. However, in the vicinity of the resonances, the method cannot be applied.