Abstract
In this article, a meander line with parasitic resonator based on ENG metamaterial is introduced, with nonlinear regression of sensitivity for sensing applications. The unit cell is manufactured on a dielectric substrate of FR-4 with a thickness of 1.5 mm. The electrical dimension of the optimized cell is 0.098λ×0.094λ, where λ is the calculated wavelength at 7.2 GHz resonance frequency. A sensor has been designed by the unit cell to measure the thickness of the polypropylene. The offered metamaterial architecture exhibits resonance frequency 7.2 GHz at C-band with the amplitude of −21.72 dB. The NRW approach based MATLAB software shows properties with an ENG behavior and permeability close to zero. For the analysis procedure, a frequency domain solver with the frequency range of 2–12 GHz was used. ADS software verified the scattering parameters (coefficient of transmission) of the equivalent circuit for the corresponding unit cell with the CST result. The result indicates that this design has SNG features at C-band. The EMR (effective medium ratio) of this suggested unit cell is 10.60 at 7.2 GHz resonance frequency. The bandwidth of the optimized cell is 6.75–7.36 GHz, and the negative permittivity region is 7.2–7.8 GHz 1 × 2, 2 × 2, 4 × 4, and 16 × 16 array of unit cell results have been examined. All the array results show the same with the unit cell. Substrate material has also been changed to see the effect of resonance frequency in the parametric study. Finally, the proposed meander line structure performance was further simulated numerically and experimentally investigated for sandwich combination thickness sensing. It shows a narrow bandwidth sensing range between 6.25 and 6.47 GHz with significant sensitivity (S) and accuracy. The design complies with superior effective medium parameters and affords miniaturization factor for the size. Due to its low profile and high EMR, the planned ENG metamaterial can be a suitable C-band aspirant for sensing applications.