UWB Muscle Water Content Sensor

The proposal explains Phase I results, using UWB for sensing muscle water content and lays down the plan for transition in Phase II. Basic operation of our sensor is to inject a train of ultra low power UWB pulses into the body, and coherently measure the reflections with picoseconds time resolution. Our sensor is RF based, and therefore interacts with the electrical properties of the body part under test. For human tissue, which is non-magnetic, there are two quantities that fully describe the average electrical-magnetic properties, the dielectric constant and conductivity. These two quantities are related to water content, and concentration of charged particles (i.e. electrolytes), respectively. Therefore by determining the dielectric constant and conductivity, we calculate the quantities of interest (water content, and electrolyte concentration). The sensing mechanism is based on the large difference between the dielectric constant of water, and that of the host material. Because the sensor is radar based, it will be non-contact. Because of the large bandwidth of our signals, the sensor will be capable of generating two- and possibly three-dimensional images of skeletal muscle water. Final sensor will have compact monosatic radar, antenna array and integrated data acquisition unit with remote communication features.