Near field food contamination detection technique employing a compact Antipodal Vivaldi antenna

This paper presents a simple yet robust technique for identification of the presence of contaminants in food samples by detecting the variation in the transmission coefficient (S21) in a near field measurement setup. A compact step-notched antipodal Vivaldi antenna with a frequency range of operation 3 - 18 GHz, and realized gain of 12.81 dB at 16 GHz having compact dimensions 60mm×40mm×0.51mm, i.e., 0.6×0.4×0.005λ03 (where λ0 is the free space wavelength at the lowest frequency of operation) is designed for contamination detection due to its compact size, high directivity and high boresight gain for near-field measurement. An equivalent image is constructed from the S - parameters, measured at different positions and different antenna polarizations over the frequency range of 3-18 GHz for metallic contaminants, i.e., iron ball and aluminum foil. An algorithm is developed for detection of contamination from the images using the reference case of no-contamination scenario. The proposed algorithm is validated using full-wave simulation.