A compact FMCW interrogator of microstrip antenna for foot pressure sensing

This paper presents a compact antenna-sensor interrogator for pressure sensing. A Frequency Modulated Continue Wave (FMCW) generator was developed to detect antenna-sensor's resonant frequency, which encodes the pressure information. The power consumption of this generator is less than 160mW and can be powered by a 3.7V portable lithium battery. In the paper, the operation principle of this FMCW interrogator is firstly explained. Subsequently, the design, simulation and validation of the FMCW generator are described. Finally, static pressure tests were performed to validate the performance of the proposed FMCW interrogator. The results were compared with those from Network Analyzer (VNA) measurements to demonstrate its accuracy.