A Metamaterial-Inspired Combined Inductive-Capacitive Sensor

This paper reports a metamaterial inspired combined inductive-capacitive sensing method for detecting and distinguishing metallic and non-metallic objects. Metallic and non-metallic objects can be distinguished by measuring both of their inductive and capacitive responses based on the fact that they respond differently to inductive and capacitive sensing. The proposed method is inspired by metamaterial structures. Both inductive and capacitive sensing are simultaneously realized when the sensor is operating at off-resonant frequencies. The proposed method is demonstrated with typical printed circuit board (PCB) technology. The designed sensor can distinguish the metallic and dielectric objects with a sensing range about 10 mm, showing a competitive performance compared with commercially available proximity sensors.