Wireless Test fixtures to Measure the Dielectric Properties of Materials in RF

RF characterisation of dielectric materials is increasingly an important scientific and commercial activity insofar as even if a very significant effort of the RF community has allowed the development of reliable characterisation solutions, it remains that these techniques rely on RF test fixtures that is heavy to implement, expensive, with a limited field of use (type of materials, frequencies, resolution) and therefore not adapted to the ever-increasing needs of companies, most of which have neither advanced skills in the field nor the equipment to implement these characterisation methods.

Indeed, the explosion of the IoT and thus of wireless communication solutions has given rise to the need for companies in a wide range of sectors (not only specialised in electronics and even less in RF) to have a better understanding of the RF performance of the materials they use or wish to use for the fabrication of their devices.

For cost or supply reasons, these companies are forced to use materials that are not necessarily suitable for RF (or simply whose RF characteristics are not known), typically plastics that under the same name may in fact have very different dielectric characteristics, particularly in terms of losses, and therefore pose a problem.

The idea of the project is to demonstrate the technical and economic viability of a new solution for RF characterisation of dielectrics.

This approach breaks with the techniques currently used insofar as it will make it possible to be able to characterise a larger number of materials (plates, solids, liquids, powders, etc.) at a lower cost compared with current solutions.

We hope that in a few years this solution will become the reference solution for a large number of companies that until now have not access to these test fixtures.