Wireless and Battery-Free Biosensor Based on Parallel Resonators for Monitoring a Wide Range of Biosignals

This article proposes a novel wireless, battery-free, and label-free biosensor for minimally invasive and noninvasive permittivity sensing for applications, such as detecting glucose levels in the interstitial dermal fluid. The miniaturized, fully passive sensor is based on two symmetric parallel 0.8 mm3 inductor–capacitor (
$LC$
) resonators. Each inductor is integrated with a conductive plate at one of its terminals. The main field of the passive sensor is outside the resonators, creating an effective capacitance outside the sensor, unlike reported in previous studies, where the effective capacitance was limited between the resonator lines. The proposed sensor was further analyzed under two different scenarios to change the region of effective capacitance and test its suitability for pressure monitoring, such as wound monitoring; first, by repositioning one of the two resonators, and second, by replacing one of the resonators with a conductive plate. The experimental results confirmed the proposed passive sensor’s performance in detecting the glucose concentration in an aqueous solution with a sensitivity of 500 and 46 kHz/(mg/dL) for minimal invasive and noninvasive monitoring, respectively, within the glucose range of 0–500 mg/dL with volume sample requirements as low as 60
$\mu \text{L}$
. Furthermore, by repositioning one of the resonators, the effective capacitance lies inside the passive sensor, making it suitable for wound monitoring. The results indicated that the shift in the resonant frequency can be made fairly linear with respect to the variation in the separation between the resonators with a sensitivity of
$2.5\times 10^{3}$
MHz/mm within the separation range of 0.2–0.5 mm, considering separation as the main factor to sense the pressure or healing of the wound.