Abstract
This paper is a study of the water sensor using a coaxial cavity resonator. This water sensor uses the resonant frequency variation of the coaxial cavity resonator when there is a water drop of the used coaxial cavity resonator. And we made resonant frequencies by controlling the input voltage of the oscillator which will be mainly resonated in the coaxial cavity resonator. First, we made the coaxial cavity resonator by simulating the resonator structure with the proposed size and we expect the resonant frequency from the simulation and then we decide the VCO from the result. Second, we made the water drop detecting sensor circuit and measured the water sensor. We decided the size of the resonator as inner conductor 5mm, outer conductor 14mm, the height of resonator 9.5mm, and the height of the glass 6mm from the simulated result. The simulated resonant frequencies are 3.09GHz and we made the VCO frequency ranges from 2.56GHz to 3.2GHz. The measured resonant frequency is 2.97GHz and the return loss is under -8. 4 dB at the center frequency. When the water is dropped on the glass of the resonator, the voltage has changed from 690mV to 145mV. It shows the proposed water sensor can detect the water by the resonant frequency variation of the resonator.
