Abstract
To develop the grain moisture meter using microwave free space transmission technique, a 10.5GHz microwave signal with the power of 11mW generated by an oscillar with a dielectric resonator is transmitted to an isolator and radiated from a transmitting $2{\times}2$ microstrip patch array antenna into the sample holder filled with the 12 to 26%w.b. of Korean Hwawung paddy rice. the microwave signal, attenuated through the grain with moisture, is collected by a receiving $2{\times}2$ microstrip patch array antenna and detected using a Shottky diode with excellent high frequency characteristic. A pair of light and simple microstrip patch array antenna for measurement of grain moisture content is designed and implemented on atenflon substrate with trleative dielectric constant of 2.6 and thickness of 0.54 by using Ensemble ver. 4.02 software. The aperture of microstrip patch arrays is 41 mm width and 24mm high. The characteristics of microstrip patch antenna such as grain. return loss, and bandwidth are 11.35dBi, -38dB and 0.35GHz($50^{\circ}$ at far-field pattern of E and H plane. The width of the sample holder is large enough to cover the signal between the antennas temperature and bulk density respectively. The calibration model for measurement of grain moisture content is proposed to reduce the effects of fluectuations in bulk density and temperature which give serious errors for the measurements . From the results of regression analysis using the statistically analysis method, the moisture content of grain samples (MC(%)) is expressed in terms of the output voltage(v), temperature (t), and bulk density of samples(${\rho}b$)as follows ;$$MC(%)\;=\;(-3.9838{\times}10^{-8}{\times}v^{3}+8.023{\times}10^{-6}{\times}v^{2}-0.0011{\times}v-0.0004{\times}t+0.1706){\frac{1}{{\rho}b}}{\times}100$ Its determination coefficient, standard error of prediction(SEP) and bias were found to be 0.9855, 0.479%w.b. and -0.0.369 %w.b. respectively between measured and predicted moisture contents of the grain samples.
