An Improved 2-Port Transmission Line Permittivity and Permeability Determination Method with Shorted Sample

Published

September 20, 2016

Author(s)

Derek A. Houtz, Dazhen Gu, Dave K. Walker

Abstract

A modified measurement technique and nonlinear least-squares solution method is introduced for determining complex permittivity and permeability in transmission lines. In addition to a 2-port S-parameter measurement, a 1-port measurement of the shorted sample is employed. For low loss samples, material property determination using the traditional method can be plagued by resonance when the sample thickness is an integer multiple of the guided half-wavelength in the sample medium. The introduction of the shorted reflectivity measurement reduces the large uncertainties inherent to the resonance effect, and increases the likelihood of determining the correct zero in the fitting of the material properties. The short-circuited sample S11 measurement has an increased magnitude as compared to the standard 2-port measure, which greatly reduces the uncertainty of this term. The resulting complex permeability and permittivity values using this method are smoother, improved solutions, and have lower uncertainty. Results are presented comparing the traditional Nicolson-Ross-Weir solution and Baker-Jarvis method with the proposed technique for a cast epoxy and a ferrite loaded microwave absorber sample in WR42 waveguide. We also investigate finite element simulated S-parameters of a fictional material and compare the derived material parameters of the proposed method to the ‘true’ permittivity and permeability values.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

Dielectric measurements, microwave, waveguide, primary mode, permittivity, permeability

Citation

Houtz, D. , Gu, D. and Walker, D. (2016), An Improved 2-Port Transmission Line Permittivity and Permeability Determination Method with Shorted Sample, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (Accessed October 17, 2025)