Design and Prototyping of Microstrip Resonators for electromagnetic characterization of dietectric materials

The exact characterization of the electromagnetic properties of dielectric material is increasingly required in different industrial fields. The purpose of this thesis is to design and prototype a sensor able to measure these properties that has to be included in agricultural machinery. The samples to analyze are, then, different agricultural products that have a non-uniform density. The chosen technology is based on a resonant measurement technique that relies on microstrip resonators. In fact, due to its working principles, this technology could be used without the need to make a resonant cavity at low frequency that would be a major issue in terms of size. After a literature study on the existing permittivity measurements techniques the design of the chosen method has been performed through simulations. Then, different prototypes have been realized and measurements on different samples have been conducted. Finally, the collected data are exposed jointly with some possible future improvements.