Testing the Multi-Frequency Complex Dielectric Permittivity Estimation with a Low-Cost Pocket Vector Network Analyzer and an Open-Ended Coaxial Probe

This paper investigates the feasibility of complex dielectric permittivity measurements with a low-cost network analyzer. Here, the pocket vector network analyzer (PNA), which is a portable device that can measure scattering parameters up to 4 GHz, is employed for measuring scattering parameters from ethanol and ethylene glycol. The PNA is first calibrated with Agilent's 85033D/E calibration kit (short-open-load) and then the ethanol and ethylene glycol are measured over the 480 MHz-4 GHz range. The gathered data is processed with recently proposed multi-frequency dielectric property (DP) estimation based on Newton's method. The results show that the multi-frequency Newton's method provides a good estimation of DPs thanks to employing the continuous nature of DPs.