5312
9, SEPTEMBER 2015
Microstrip Patch Antenna Temperature Sensor
Jeremiah W. Sanders, Jun Yao, and Haiying Huang, Member, IEEE
Abstract— The resonant frequencies of a microstrip patch
antenna are dependent on the dielectric constant of its substrate
and the physical dimensions of its radiation patch. Both of
these parameters are temperature-dependent. In this paper,
we investigated the effects of temperature on the antenna res-
onant frequencies for the purpose of studying the microstrip
patch antenna as a temperature sensor. First, the relationship
between the antenna resonant frequency shift and the temper-
ature change is derived based on the transmission line model.
To validate the theoretical prediction, antenna sensors bonded
on different metal bases were tested in a temperature chamber.
By comparing the measured temperature–frequency relationship
with the theoretical predictions, we discovered that the dielectric
constant of the substrate is not only dependent on temperature
but also influenced by the base material. After calibrating the
thermal coefficient of the substrate dielectric constant using the
measurement data, the differences between the measurements
and the theoretical predictions were within the expected
systematic error of the reference thermocouple, validating that
a microstrip patch antenna can serve as a temperature sensor.
Index Terms— Antenna sensor, dielectric constant, microstrip
patch antenna, temperature sensor, thermocouple, wireless
sensor.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A S ONE of the fundamental thermodynamic properties,
temperature is an important parameter to be measured in
manufacturing processes, environment monitoring, structural
safety protection, and agriculture and food production. Based
on the nature of contact, temperature sensing techniques can be
classified as either invasive, noninvasive, or semi-invasive [1].
Invasive temperature sensors are usually installed on or near
a component of interest. A cable has to be used to connect
the sensor to the measurement instrument. Two examples of
such temperature sensors are thermocouples and optical fiber
temperature sensors [2]. A major drawback of invasive tem-
perature sensing techniques is that the cable connections could
incur high installation and maintenance costs, especially for
high temperature sensing applications. In contrast, noninvasive
temperature measurement techniques, such as infrared
Manuscript received April 5, 2015; accepted May 21, 2015. Date of
publication June 1, 2015; date of current version July 24, 2015. This work
was supported in part by the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manu-
facturing Innovation through the National Science Foundation (NSF) under
Grant CMMI-0846074 and in part by NSF through the Research Experience
for Undergraduates Program. The associate editor coordinating the review of
this paper and approving it for publication was Dr. Chang-Soo Kim.
J. W. Sanders was with the University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington,
TX 76019 USA. He is now with Duke University, Durham, NC 27708 USA
(e-mail: jeremiah.sanders@duke.edu).
J. Yao is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas
at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019 USA (e-mail: jun.yao@mavs.uta.edu).
H. Huang is with the University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019
USA (e-mail: huang@uta.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2015.2437884
1530-437X © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO.
thermography and acoustic thermography, can remotely
measure the temperature of a medium without any physical
contact. However, noninvasive techniques usually require
expensive and high precision instruments [1]. For semi-
invasive temperature sensing, the temperature sensor is
installed on the component of interest and the temperature
readouts are carried out remotely. As such, the total cost of
implementing a semi-invasive temperature monitoring system
could be substantially lower than what is required for installing
invasive and noninvasive temperature sensing systems.
The advances of wireless sensor technologies in the
past decades have introduced many semi-invasive tempera-
ture sensors that can be wirelessly interrogated using radio
frequency (RF) or microwave signals. Battery-powered
wireless sensor nodes based on the Berkeley Mote platform
have been widely studied for indoor and outdoor temperature
monitoring [3] as well as for applications in the agriculture
and food industries [4]. Even though these wireless sensors
can reach long distances, they can only take measurements
intermittently due to the imbalance between the power con-
sumption of the sensor node and the limited capacity of
the on-board battery. Passive wireless sensors, such as those
based on inductive coupling [5]–[7] and surface acoustic
waves (SAWs) [8], [9] can operate without a local power
source. Wireless sensors based on inductive coupling usually
consist of an inductor-capacitor (LC) resonant circuit.
Temperature is remotely measured from the resonant charac-
teristics of the LC circuit that are sensitive to temperature.
However, inductive coupling based techniques usually have a
rather short interrogation distance because the LC circuit has
to be placed in the near field of the reader antenna. A wireless
SAW temperature sensor consists of an antenna and a SAW
resonator fabricated on a piezoelectric substrate. The RF signal
received by the antenna is first converted to SAWs due to the
piezoelectric effect. After propagating in the substrate surface
for a certain distance, the SAWs are reflected and converted
back to an RF signal, which in turn is retransmitted by the
antenna. Temperature is measured from the parameters of the
retransmitted RF signal that are influenced by temperature
changes, e.g. the phase delay. Due to the round trip conversion
of the electrical RF and mechanical SAW energy, a wireless
SAW sensor can have an insertion loss as high as 50 dB [8],
which limits its interrogation distance.
Another class of wireless temperature sensors is based
on antenna backscattering, which can have an interrogation
distance of a few meters [10]–[13]. When an interrogation
signal is transmitted to an antenna, the antenna will
first receive the interrogation signal and then reflect the
received signal if it is not terminated with a perfectly
matched load. This reflected signal is referred to as the
SANDERS et al.: MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA TEMPERATURE SENSOR 5313

antenna backscattering. The strength of the antenna

backscattering depends on the impedance of the antenna
termination load. Therefore, by connecting the antenna to
a temperature sensitive load, such as a microwave
resonator [10], [14], a CMOS temperature sensor [15], [16],
or a resistor [12], the temperature information can be encoded
in the antenna backscattering and thus can be acquired
wirelessly. The temperature sensitive load (the temperature
sensor) can either be a low-power active component powered
by energy harvested from the interrogation RF signal [13]
or a passive component. Therefore, antenna backscattering
based wireless sensors do not need any local power source.
Moreover, they can operate in the far field of the interrogation
Fig. 1. Illustration of a microstrip patch antenna with a rectangular radiation
antenna and have a low insertion loss by matching the patch.
impedances of the sensor antenna and the load. As such,
antenna backscattering based wireless sensors can be
interrogated from a longer distance than SAW based or
fundamental resonant modes are the TM010 mode and the
inductive coupling based wireless sensors.
TM001 mode. The difference between these two modes is that
The sensor antenna is an important component of antenna
the electric current of the TM010 mode flows along the length
backscattering based wireless sensors. Printed microstrip patch
direction of the radiation patch while the electric current of the
antennas are probably the best choice due to their simple
TM001 mode flows along the width direction of the radiation
configuration, low profile, light weight, conformability, and
patch.
low production cost. The temperature sensitivity of these
The resonant frequency of the TM010 mode, f10 , can be
antennas, however, could have a strong influence on the
calculated according to the transmission line model as
measurement accuracy [17], especially when the temperature
is measured from the amplitude of the antenna backscattering c 1
at a specific interrogation frequency. In order to compensate f 10 = √ , (1)
2 εre L + 2L oc
for the temperature sensitivity of the sensor antenna, it was
suggested that the substrate height of the antenna should be where c is the speed of light and L is the length of the radiation
increased [18], [19]. Since the antenna is usually the largest patch [24]. The effective dielectric constant of the antenna εre
component of the wireless sensor, increasing the antenna is calculated from the dielectric constant of the substrate εr ,
height would result in a bulkier sensor, which may not be the substrate height h, and the width of the radiation
desirable for many applications. patch w as
In this paper, we evaluate the effect of temperature on
εr + 1 εr − 1
the resonant frequencies of microstrip patch antennas for the εre = + √ . (2)
purpose of adopting the microstrip patch antenna directly as a 2 2 1 + 10h/w
temperature sensor. Our group and others have demonstrated
The line extension L oc can be calculated from the effective
that the resonant frequencies of a microstrip patch antenna
dielectric constant εre , the substrate height h, and the width
can be wirelessly interrogated from more than one meter away
of the radiation patch w as
using low-cost wireless interrogators [20], [21]. Investigating
the temperature response of microstrip patch antennas will lead (εre + 0.3) (w/ h + 0.264)
to a simpler temperature sensor that is inexpensive to produce L oc = 0.412h . (3)
(εre − 0.258) (w/ h + 0.813)
and can be interrogated wirelessly from long distances.
In addition, we have validated the strain sensing capability When the substrate height h is much smaller than the
of microstrip patch antennas in our previous work [22], [23]. dimensions of the radiation patch, h  w and h  L,
Rendering a microstrip patch antenna with simultaneous strain the effective dielectric constant can be approximated as the
and temperature sensing capabilities will enable temperature dielectric constant of the substrate, i.e. εre ≈ εr . Moreover,
compensated strain measurements, resulting in more robust the line extension L oc can be neglected. As a result, (1) can
operation of the wireless antenna strain sensor at varying be simplified to
environmental conditions. c
f 10 = √ . (4)
II. P RINCIPLE OF O PERATION 2L εr
A microstrip patch antenna consisting of a radiation patch, The antenna frequency shift δ f 10 can then be expressed in
a ground plane, and a dielectric substrate is illustrated in Fig. 1. terms of the changes in the substrate dielectric constant εr
Both the radiation patch and the ground plane are made of con- and the radiation patch length L as
ductive materials. As such, they form an electromagnetic (EM)
resonator that radiates at specific resonant frequencies. For an ∂ f 10 ∂ f 10
δ f 10 = δεr + δL. (5)
antenna with a rectangular radiation patch, the two lowest ∂εr ∂L
5314 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015

Based on (4), we can derive that TABLE I

    D ESIGN PARAMETERS OF A NTENNA S ENSOR
∂ f 10 1 c 1
= − √ = − f 10 (6a)
∂εr 2εr 2L εr 2εr
and    
∂ f 10 1 c 1
= − √ = − f 10 . (6b)
∂L L 2L εr L
Normalizing the antenna frequency shift with respect to the
resonant frequency f 10 results in
δ f 10 1 δεr δL
=− − . (7)
f10 2 εr L
Both the dielectric constant εr and the radiation patch length L
are dependent on temperature. For the purpose of temperature
sensing, we can select a substrate whose normalized dielectric
constant change is linearly proportional to temperature change.
In other words, δεr /εr in (7) can be represented as
δεr of the conductive layers to eliminate temperature-induced
= αε δT, (8)
εr thermal stresses, delaminations, and/or warping of the antenna
where αε is the thermal coefficient of dielectric sensor. After researching the properties of numerous sub-
constant (TCDk ) of the substrate [25]. The sensitivity strates and consulting engineers from the manufacturer, we
of the radiation patch length to temperature changes is selected RO3006 laminate as the substrate material for the
governed by the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) αT , antenna temperature sensor. Made of ceramic-filled polyte-
which can be expressed as trafluoroethylene (PTFE) composites, the RO3006 laminate
can operate over a temperature range of −100 to 250 °C
δL
= αT δT. (9) with a bi-linear temperature-dielectric constant relationship.
L In addition, its TCDk is specified to be −160 ppm/°C
By inserting (8) and (9) into (7), a linear relationship between over a temperature range of 0 to 100 °C, which is much
the normalized frequency shift and temperature change is larger in magnitude than its CTE of 17 ppm/°C [26].
established, namely As such, the temperature response of the antenna sensor
  will be predominately contributed by the TCDk . Moreover,
δ f 10 1
=− αε + αT δT = k T δT, (10) the CTE of the substrate is the same as that of the copper
f 10 2
conductive layers. As a result, the ground plane, the substrate,
in which k T is defined as the temperature sensitivity of and the radiation patch of the antenna sensor should all expand
the normalized frequency shift. As indicated by (10), the at the same rate. A thin substrate with a height of 0.127 mm
temperature sensitivity k T is determined by the TCDk of was selected to satisfy the requirement that the substrate height
the substrate as well as the CTE of the sensor. Since both should be much smaller than the dimensions of the radiation
parameters are material properties, the normalized antenna patch. Since we have demonstrated a wireless antenna strain
frequency shift is independent of the geometric dimensions of sensor with a substrate height of 76 μm previously [20],
the radiation patch. Therefore, the normalized frequency shift we are confident that using a 0.127 mm substrate will not
δ f 01 / f 01 of the TM001 mode should have the same temperature limit the wireless functionality of the antenna sensor in the
sensitivity value, assuming the material properties αε and αT future. The other material properties of RO3006 are given
are isotropic. in table 1.
After the selection of the dielectric substrate, a dual-
III. S UBSTRATE S ELECTION AND A NTENNA D ESIGN frequency antenna sensor with f 10 = 5 GHz and
Several considerations must be made when selecting the f 01 = 6 GHz was designed according to the equations
substrate material for the antenna temperature sensor. Based presented by [23]. Even though only one resonant frequency is
on (10), it is preferable for the TCDk αε to be constant needed for temperature sensing, the second resonant frequency
over the operational temperature range of the antenna sensor can serve as a reference since both resonant frequency modes
in order to achieve a linear sensor response. Secondly, it are expected to experience the same change with respect to
is desirable for αε and αT to have the same sign so that temperature change. The radiation patch was designed to be
maximum temperature sensitivity can be achieved. When these fed at its edge with a 50  microstrip transmission line.
two parameters have different signs, one of them should As shown in Fig. 2, the transmission line was designed to
be much larger than the other so that the opposing effect be perpendicular to the length direction of the radiation patch
of the smaller parameter does not reduce the temperature and positioned at a distance of x 0 = 4.08 mm from one
sensitivity significantly. Thirdly, since the antenna sensor is of the edges. As such, the impedance of the antenna sensor
composed of one dielectric substrate and two conductive was matched to 50  for the TM010 mode [23], [27]. The
layers, the CTE of the substrate should closely match those dimensions of the radiation patch and the ground plane as well
SANDERS et al.: MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA TEMPERATURE SENSOR
Fig. 2. Design of an antenna temperature sensor fed by a microstrip
transmission line.
as the dimensions and feeding location of the transmission line
are given in table 1.
IV. A NTENNA S ENSOR FABRICATION
The procedure to fabricate the antenna sensor on a dielectric
substrate with copper clads on both sides is similar to the
printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication technique described
by [28]. First, the geometry of the radiation patch and
the transmission line was drawn in computer-aided design
software and laser printed on a sheet of PCB image transfer
film (Techniks Inc., PNPB20). The transfer film was aligned
on top of a square piece of RO3006 laminate so that the edges
of the radiation patch were parallel with the edges of the
laminate. Heat was applied over the PCB film using a clothing
iron to transfer the printed pattern to the copper surface of the
laminate. The opposite surface of the laminate was covered
with masking tape to preserve the copper clad, which serves
as the ground plane. The laminate with the transferred pattern
was then submerged in a ferric chloride solution to remove
the exposed copper. Once the copper had been removed, the
sensor was pulled from the chemical bath and the remaining
solution was washed off. After removing the masking tape,
the fabricated antenna sensor was given an acetone bath to
remove the ink remaining from the PCB transfer film.
The antenna sensor was bonded on a metal base using
a strain gauge epoxy (Micro-Measurements M-Bond 600).
To attach an edge-mounted subminiature version A (SMA)
connector to the transmission line, the metal base was
machined to have a thin overhang. The thickness of the
overhang was designed to match the gap distance between the
mounting tabs of the SMA connector. In order to gain access
to the ground plane of the antenna sensor, two slots were cut
from the overhang so that the mounting tabs could be aligned
inside the slots. Conductive epoxy (CircuitWorks, CW2400)
was applied to connect the mounting tabs to the ground plane.
The signal pin of the SMA connector was soldered to the
microstrip transmission line. A picture of the test sample with
the antenna sensor bonded to a copper base is shown in Fig. 3.
The resonant frequencies of the fabricated antenna sensor
can be determined by measuring its S11 parameter using a
vector network analyzer (VNA), which represents the power
of the microwave signal reflected by the antenna sensor as
a function of frequency. The VNA was calibrated to the
end of the coaxial cable so the effect of the microstrip
feed is considered to be a part of the antenna sensor.
5315
Fig. 3. Test sample with antenna temperature sensor bonded to a copper
base.
Fig. 4. Comparison between simulated and measured S11 curves of the
antenna sensor.
As shown in Fig. 4, the fabricated antenna sensor displayed
two fundamental resonant frequencies; one at 4.82 GHz and
the other at 5.82 GHz. The S11 parameter of the antenna
sensor was also simulated using an EM simulation tool, Sonnet
Lite v14.53. Due to the coarse frequency resolution adopted
for the simulation model to reduce the computation time, the
resonant depths of the simulated S11 curve are shallower than
the measured S11 curve, but this does not affect identifying the
resonant frequency of the antenna sensor. As shown in Fig. 4,
the measured S11 curve is shifted to the left by approximately
180 MHz when compared to the simulated S11 curve. These
discrepancies could be due to the fabrication process and/or the
parasitic capacitance introduced by the SMA connector [23].
Since the temperature sensitivity of the antenna sensor is
expressed in terms of the normalized frequency shift δ f 10 / f 10 ,
the deviations from the design frequencies will not have any
impact on the performance of the antenna sensor.
V. I NSTRUMENTATION AND E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP
The experimental setup for characterizing the antenna
sensor’s responses to temperature changes is shown
in Fig. 5(a). A temperature chamber was constructed
from a foam box and a hot plate. The foam box was selected
because it does not generate significant reflections as a metal
chamber does. It also thermally insulates the test sample
(see Fig. 3) from the ambient environment. Two of the walls
of the foam box were outfitted with removable doors, which
serve as access points to the interior of the chamber. A hot
5316 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015

Fig. 5. (a) Experimental setup for antenna temperature sensor characterization and (b) temperature control and data acquisition flow diagram.

plate (Cole Parmer, 112001CP) was placed inside the foam

box to heat the test sample, which was placed on top of the
hot plate. A digital control circuit including a relay (Goodsky,
RW-SH-103D) was spliced into the power supply of the hot
plate for the purpose of controlling the temperature. The
antenna sensor was connected to a VNA (Rohde & Schwartz,
ZVA24) located outside the foam box using a coaxial cable.
An entry hole to the chamber was made for the coaxial cable
to pass through. To prevent the coaxial cable from moving
during the experiment, an expandable foam material was
inserted in the entry hole to support the cable. A self-adhering
K-type thermocouple (Omega, SA1-K) was attached to the
test sample, adjacent to the antenna sensor, to provide the
Fig. 6. Temperature profile for sensor characterization.
reference temperature reading.
A flow diagram illustrating the control of the data
acquisition system is provided in Fig. 5(b). The VNA was
connected to a computer via a wired local-area-network (LAN)
connection. It was programmed to acquire the S11 curve with
a frequency resolution of 10 kHz over two different frequency
ranges; one from 4.62 to 4.97 GHz was designated for the
TM010 mode, and the other from 5.61 to 5.96 GHz was
designated for the TM001 mode. The thermocouple readings
were collected using an embedded data logger, which consists
of a thermocouple input module (National Instruments,
FP-TC-120) and a network interface module (National
Instruments, FP-1000). Cold-junction-compensation and
linearization were provided by the FP-TC-120. The control
voltage to the relay was supplied by a microcontroller Fig. 7. The S11 curves measured from the antenna sensor bonded on a
(Arduino, UNO R2). The VNA, the embedded data logger, copper base at different temperature increments.
and the microcontroller were controlled by a LabVIEW
program running on a computer. For a given frequency Subsequently, the hot plate was switched on and the
sweep, the VNA acquires the S11 curve and identifies the temperature was monitored from the thermocouple readings.
resonant frequency that corresponds to the minimum return Once the thermocouple readings indicated that a temperature
loss. The S11 curve, the resonant frequency data, and the of 100 °C had been reached, the hot plate was switched off
thermocouple readings were collected by the LabVIEW by the LabVIEW program and the test sample was allowed to
program automatically. cool to 40 °C, after which the hot plate was switched back on.
To release any residue strains that may have been introduced The heat up and cool down cycles were repeated three times as
during the fabrication process, the as-fabricated test sample shown in Fig. 6, which is a plot of the temperature readings
was subjected to thermal cycles in which the maximum tem- from the thermocouple versus time. During the heating and
peratures were gradually increased to 100 °C. After the initial cooling phases, the LabVIEW program collected both the
thermal cycling, the test sample was heated to 40 °C. The S11 curves and the corresponding resonant frequency data over
start temperature was selected to be slightly above the ambient the two specified frequency ranges every 3.375 seconds. The
temperature so that the temperature can be controlled precisely. thermocouple reading was recorded every second. Both the
SANDERS et al.: MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA TEMPERATURE SENSOR 5317

Fig. 8. Comparison of measured sensor responses to theoretical predictions for the (a) TM010 mode and the (b) TM001 mode. Comparison of measured
sensor responses and those calculated using the calibrated TCDk values for the (c) TM010 mode and the (d) TM001 mode. Temperature measurement errors
calculated from the differences between the measured and calculated frequency shifts for the (e) TM010 mode and the (f) TM001 mode. Abbreviations used
here for aluminum, copper, and steel are Al, Cu, and St, respectively.

resonant frequency measurements and the temperature data
were time stamped so that the antenna frequency measure-
ments can be correlated with the thermocouple readings. Since
the temperature decreases during the cooling phases were
more gradual than the temperature increases during the heating
phases, the frequency measurements were paired with the
thermocouple readings only for the three cooling down phases
so that the differences due to the time latency between these
two measurements can be kept small.
VI. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Antenna sensors were bonded on 6061-T6 aluminum,
pure copper, and 1018 steel. These materials were chosen
because they have different CTEs, which are 23.4 ppm/°C
for aluminum, 16.5 ppm/°C for copper, and 11.7 ppm/°C
for steel [29]. The temperature-induced frequency shifts are
evident from the S11 curves shown in Fig. 7, which were
obtained from the antenna sensor bonded on the copper
base at different temperature increments. Since the TCDk
of the substrate is negative and much larger in magnitude
than the CTE of copper, the S11 curve shifted to the right
with increasing temperature. In other words, the resonant fre-
quency of the antenna sensor increased with the temperature.
In order to visualize the shift of the antenna resonant frequency
with temperature, only the f 01 frequency of the antenna
sensor is shown in Fig. 7. The f 10 frequency had similar
shifts as the f 01 frequency and thus is not shown. Notice
also that the bandwidth of the antenna resonance increased
with temperature. According to [30], the antenna bandwidth
is related to the height and the dielectric constant of the
substrate as well as the dimensions of the radiation patch.
Therefore, the bandwidth of the antenna resonance is also
temperature dependent. In this paper, however, we will only
focus on the effects of temperature on the antenna frequency
5318
TABLE II
M EASURED S ENSITIVITIES AND VALUES OF THE TCD k C ALCULATED F ROM E XPERIMENTAL D ATA
since measuring the antenna frequency is easier and more
robust than measuring the bandwidth. Note also that the
bandwidth decreases with temperature increase. In general, a
narrow bandwidth makes detecting the frequency shift easier,
which could lead to smaller measurement uncertainties at
higher temperatures.
The normalized resonant frequency shifts for both the
TM010 and TM001 modes are plotted versus temperature
change in Figs. 8(a) and 8(b). For clarity, only the measure-
ments at every 5 °C between the 40 °C and 100 °C temperature
range are presented. The theoretical predictions based on (10)
are plotted in the same graphs as solid lines for comparison.
Since the substrate and copper films are much thinner than the
metal base, they are expected to experience the same thermal
expansions as the base. Therefore, the CTEs of the metal bases
were used for the theoretical predictions instead of the CTE of
the substrate. The linearity and sensitivity k T of the antenna
sensor response can be determined by fitting the measurement
data to a linear curve. As given in table 2, the measurement
data displayed very good linearity for both modes, judging
from the coefficient of determination R 2 values. However, the
sensitivity values obtained from the measured data are much
larger than their predicted counterparts. The observed discrep-
ancies may be contributed by the TCDk value provided by
the manufacture, which was measured using the IPC-TM-650
test method [26]. According to the test manual, “the mea-
sured effective permittivity for the resonator element can
differ from that observed in an application” and thus “users
are cautioned against assuming the method yields permit-
tivity and loss tangent values that directly correspond to
applications.” [31]. To address these limitations, we calcu-
lated the substrate TCDk values directly from the measured
temperature sensitivity k T using (10). As given in table 2, the
measured TCDk values are dependent on the base material;
the substrate bonded on the aluminum base has the largest
TCDk value while the one bonded on the steel base has the
smallest TCDk value. The TCDk values measured from the
two resonant frequencies for each base material are similar in
value. Therefore, the calibrated TCDk values were calculated
as the averaged value of these two modes for each base mate-
rial. Substituting the calibrated TCDk values into (10) yielded
very good agreements between the measured and calculated
frequency shifts, as shown in Figs. (8c) and (8d). Even though
k T is dependent on the base material, it seemed to remain
relatively constant for a given base material. We have made
several sensors on each of the base materials, and we were able
to achieve repeatable k T values for each base material. The dif-
ferences between the measured and calculated frequency shifts
were converted to temperature changes using the respective
sensitivities k T . In other words, the measurement errors were
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 15, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015
calculated as eT = δTt heoret ical − δTex p = (δ f / ft heoret ical −
δ f / f exp )/k T . As shown in Figs. (8e) and (8f), the measure-
ment errors for both the TM010 mode and the TM001 mode
frequency shifts are within the expected systematic errors for a
K-type thermocouple of ±2.2 °C [32]. We also observed
that the error distribution for the TM001 mode is smaller
than that of the TM010 mode. According to equation (10),
the temperature uncertainty is proportional to the normalized
frequency uncertainty, i.e. δ f / f. Assuming the two modes have
similar frequency uncertainties, the TM001 mode should have
smaller temperature uncertainties since it has a higher resonant
frequency.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper we investigated microstrip patch antennas for
temperature sensing by subjecting patch antennas bonded on
different metal bases to thermal cycling and comparing the
measured antenna resonant frequency shifts with thermocouple
readings. Excellent linearity between the measured resonant
frequency shifts and temperature changes was achieved.
However, a large discrepancy between the predicted and
measured temperature sensitivity of the antenna sensor was
observed. After calibrating the substrate TCDk , the mea-
surement errors, calculated from the differences between the
measured data and the calibrated theoretical predictions, were
within the expected systematic error of the reference thermo-
couple. Therefore, a microstrip patch antenna can be used as a
temperature sensor as long as the substrate TCDk is calibrated.
In addition, we also found that the substrate TCDk varies with
the base material. We suspect that this dependency is due to
the different thermal strains experienced by the substrate when
it is bonded on base materials with different CTEs. In order
to validate this hypothesis, combined temperature and strain
testing of the antenna sensors should be carried out in the
future so that the coupled effect of temperature and strain on
the substrate TCDk can be characterized. In addition, the long-
term stability of the antenna sensor should be studied in more
detail in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank J. Dobrick from Rogers
Corporation for supplying the laminates that were used for
this project.
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Jeremiah W. Sanders received the B.S. degree in aerospace engineering
from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2014. He is currently pursuing
the master’s degree in medical physics at Duke University. He is a member of
RAI Laboratories at Duke University, where he investigates the quantification
of image quality of computed tomography images.
Jun Yao received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Shanghai for Science and Technology in 2012. He is currently pursuing
the Ph.D. degree at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
Texas at Arlington. His research interests include wireless sensor technology
for structural health monitoring, IC circuit design for RF energy harvester and
antenna interrogation, and digital signal processing.
Haiying Huang (M’98) received the B.Eng. degree in aircraft propulsion from
the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1987, and the M.S.
degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering
from the Georgia Institute of Technology, in 1997 and 1998, respectively.
She is currently a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with
the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research are focused on developing
wireless, microwave, ultrasonic, and optical fiber sensors for heath monitoring
of structures, systems, and humans.