The use of microwave technology is currently under investigation for non-invasive estimation of glycemia in patients with diabetes. Due to their construction, metamaterial (MTM)-based sensors have the potential to provide higher sensitivity of the phase shift of the S21 parameter (∠S21) to changes in glucose concentration compared to standard microstrip transmission line (MSTL)-based sensors. In this study, a MSTL sensor and three MTM sensors with 5, 7, and 9 MTM unit cells are exposed to liquid phantoms with different dielectric properties mimicking a change in blood glucose concentration from 0 to 14 mmol/L. Numerical models were created for the individual experiments, and the calculated S-parameters show good agreement with experimental results, expressed by the maximum relative error of 8.89% and 0.96% at a frequency of 1.99 GHz for MSTL and MTM sensor with nine unit cells, respectively. MTM sensors with an increasing number of cells show higher sensitivity of 0.62° per mmol/L and unit cell to blood glucose concentration as measured by changes in ∠S21. In accordance with the numerical simulations, the MTM sensor with nine unit cells showed the highest sensitivity of the sensors proposed by us, with an average of 3.66° per mmol/L at a frequency of 1.99 GHz, compared to only 0.48° per mmol/L for the MSTL sensor. The multi-cell MTM sensor has the potential to proceed with evaluation of human blood samples.
Keywords: dielectric properties; glucose monitoring; microwave sensor.