Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

A more accurate and less time consuming method to determine sugar content in a sugarcane juice is proposed in this paper. The increasing use of microwaves for industrial testing is a growing demand for permittivity measurement as a function of frequency. Determination of sugar in sugarcane is an important task in sugar refineries as well as food industries. Early estimation of sugar content in cane juice also enables fixing the price for canes for procurement from the fields. The various methods to measure sugar content are IR method and chemical analysis method which consumes time. Hence we propose a microstrip resonator sensor designed at 1 GHz fundamental frequency using ADS tool which has passed experimental validation by means of Vector Network analyser. The sensor is implemented using planar technology and is more compact and is well suited for permittivity measurement. The technique adopted for the sensor is shift in resonant frequency as a function of density of sucrose content in sugarcane juice.

Keywords: Frequency Shift, Microstrip, Moisture Content, Permittivity, Resonator Sensor