Low-cost portable microwave sensor for non-invasive monitoring of blood glucose level: novel design utilizing a four-cell CSRR hexagonal configuration

This article presents a novel design of portable planar microwave sensor for fast, accurate, and non-invasive monitoring of the blood glucose level as an effective technique for diabetes control and prevention. The proposed sensor design incorporates four cells of hexagonal-shaped complementary split ring resonators (CSRRs), arranged in a honey-cell configuration, and fabricated on a thin sheet of an FR4 dielectric substrate.The CSRR sensing elements are coupled via a planar microstrip-line to a radar board operating in the ISM band 2.4–2.5 GHz. The integrated sensor shows an impressive detection capability and a remarkable sensitivity of blood glucose levels (BGLs). The superior detection capability is attributed to the enhanced design of the CSRR sensing elements that expose the glucose samples to an intense interaction with the electromagnetic fields highly concentrated around the sensing region at the induced resonances. This feature enables the developed sensor to detect extremely delicate variations in the electromagnetic properties that characterize the varying-level glucose samples. The desired performance of the fabricated sensor is practically validated through in-vitro measurements using a convenient setup of Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) that records notable traces of frequency-shift responses when the sensor is loaded with samples of 70–120 mg/dL glucose concentrations. This is also demonstrated in the radar-driven prototype where the raw data collected at the radar receiving channel shows obvious patterns that reflect glucose-level variations. Furthermore, the differences in the sensor responses for tested glucose samples are quantified by applying the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) machine learning algorithm. The proposed sensor, beside its impressive detection capability of the diabetes-spectrum glucose levels, has several other favorable attributes including compact size, simple fabrication, affordable cost, non-ionizing nature, and minimum health risk or impact. Such attractive features promote the proposed sensor as a possible candidate for non-invasive glucose levels monitoring for diabetes as evidenced by the preliminary results from a proof-of-concept in-vivo experiment of tracking an individual’s BGL by placing his fingertip onto the sensor. The presented system is a developmental platform towards radar-driven wearable continuous BGL monitors.