An Integrated 3D-Printed Lens with Ultra-Wideband Flower-Shaped Stub Antenna for Ethanol-Water Mixture Characterization

This paper presents a 3D-printed hemispherical lens integrated with flower-shaped stub antenna for liquid-mixture characterization. The proposed lens antenna is designed, fabricated, and integrated with the ultra-wideband planar antenna. A high impact polystyrene (HIPs) is selected to design the 3D-printed lens antenna by using the fused deposition modelling (FDM) technique, due to low loss 3D-printed material. The optimum the dimensions of the lens antenna are obtained by using the 3D EM Simulation CST Studio, which is used to investigate the performance of the antenna, e.g., gain, radiation pattern and reflection coefficient. To discriminate the liquid content in ethanol-water mixture, the level of the transmission coefficient (S21) is detected. The proposed sensor system offers various preferable features, e.g., non-destructive method and non-contact measurement. Five samples, e.g., 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, and 80% ethanol in the ethanol-water mixtures, are measured and performed to generate the extraction model. The proposed sensor also offers other advantages, e.g., real-time monitoring and no life-cycle limitation.