Passive wireless structural health monitoring sensor made with a flexible planar dipole antenna

Cheap and efficient wireless sensors have been widely studied by electronics and communication technology development. In this paper, a flexible planar dipole antenna based passive wireless strain sensor has been investigated. The planar dipole antenna is designed for X band and made on a flexible polymer substrate using a conventional photolithography process. The fabricated dipole antenna is attached to a nonmetallic cantilever beam and monitors its bending strain. Mechanical strain and load impedance of the dipole antenna can change its resonance frequency, return loss and reflected signal. The return loss and reflected signals of the dipole antenna sensor are characterized by using a network analyzer. The strain sensitivity of the sensor is proportional to the return loss variation with the bending strain of the cantilever beam. The magnitude of reflected signals increases as the bending strain increases.