Wireless sensing of Open loop micro coils using an

air core Helical coil

A.Yousaf and Prof.L.Reindl
Institute of Microsystems Engineering IMTEK
Laboratory for Electrical Instrumentation
University of Freiburg, Germany
adnan.yousaf@imtek.uni-freiburg.de
AbstractIn this paper we report here remote sensing of open
loop micro coil parameters using an air core helical coil. Test
micro coil is inductive coupled in the near electromagnetic eld
by placing it inside the air core helical coil and measuring
the wirelessly reected impedance signal. The coupled system
is analytically modeled including the effects of the frequency
depended coupling capacitances between the helical coil and the
open loop test micro coil. Non linear least square estimation
is used to extract the best estimated parameter values of the
open loop test micro coil.FEM simulations are performed in
COMSOL Multiphyscics and HFSS (High Frequency structure
Simulation) to visualize the magnetic eld behavior and to verify
the wirelessly measured results.
Keywords: Helical coil, remote sensing, reected impedance
I. INTRODUCTION
Rapid developments in modern electronics reduced the
components size signicantly. This size reduction in electronic
components (passive and active) has a down size as well, for
example testing micro coils with the wire diameter less than
65m degrades the micro coil structure. Figure 1 elaborates
the problem of testing a micro coil using the conventional
LCR meter. A part from deforming the micro coil structure
Test micro
inductor
Mechanical
Contacts
Fig. 1. Mechanical contact based micro coil measurement
these mechanical contacts parameters also inuence the actual
parameters of test micro coil parameters like inductance ,inter
winding capacitance and Q factor. This leads to the require-
ment of investigating new wireless test methods which can be
merged in micro coil manufacturing industry.
Previously wireless read out of inductively and capacitive cou-
pled systems have been reported frequently. In [1] a wearable
wireless and battery less stethoscope using inductively coupled
system is described. Idea of wirelessly sensing humidity
through inductive coupling approach is given in [2].Wireless
read out of LC sensors is presented in [3] where the read
out is performed using an analog front end circuit based on
demodulation for mapping the real part of the reader coil
impedance to a dc output voltage. [4] reports a technique to
extract micro coil parameters using an electrically small single
loop antenna inductively coupled to open ended test micro
in near electromagnetic eld region. All of the publications
focused on the inductive or capacitive coupled approaches. We
present here a air core transformer based coupling approach to
wirelessly measure and characterize the open loop micro coil
parameters by placing them inside the designed helical coil.
II. WIRELESS MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
Figure 2 shows the wireless measurement system overview.
Agilent network analyzer E5071B is used to wirelessly mea-

Network
Analyzer
Test micro coil
parameter
extraction
Wireless analytical
model
Micro coil parameter
Tolerance range
calculation
Reference wired
micro coil
measurement
Helical coil
Zwireless

Open loop test
micro coil
Fig. 2. Wireless measurement system overview
sure the reected impedance signal as shown in gure 3. Micro
2012 - 9th International Multi-Conference on Systems, Signals and Devices
978-1-4673-1591-3/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
coil parameter extraction is performed using Non Linear Least
Square (NLLS) tting algorithm as developed in [5].
A. Helical coil design
The open loop test micro coil is placed at the center of
the designed helical coil as shown in gure 3. The designed
Open loop test
micro coil
SMA
Connector
Helical Coil
Para-film
Insulation
Fig. 3. Designed Helical coil inductively coupled to a test micro coil
helical coil has resonance frequency of 415MHz which is well
above the test micro coil self resonating frequencies. Further
it has an average pitch of 3.3mm, wire diameter of 2mm, an
average helical coil diameter of 11mm with ve turns.
Applying an electric eld to a circular loop or a coil creates a
magnetic eld which is strong and concentrated inside the loop
as compared to outside. Changing the angle of test micro coil
placement varies the magnetic ux linkage, enhanced wireless
reected impedance signal is obtained by placing the test
micro coil inside the helical coil in direction perpendicular
to the magnetic eld.
B. Wireless analytical model
Wireless analytical model of the system is shown in gure
4. Open loop micro coil parameters i.e. inductance ,inter-
winding capacitance and resistance are given by L
2
,C
2
and R
2
with C
c1
, C
c2
are the frequency dependent coupling between
the open loop test micro coil and designed helical coil.
Wireless analytical model of the coupled system is given in
equation 1.
Z
wireless
=
R
h
+jwL
h
1 (Cp +C
h
)

jwR
h
+w
2
L
h
+
(wM)
2
jwL
2
+R
2
1w
2
L
2
C
2
+jwR
2
L
2
+
1
jw(C
c1
+C
c2
)
(1)
Where w is the angular frequency and M is the mutual
inductance and dened by the following equation.
M = K

L
h
L
2
(2)

Open loop test
micro coil
L2
R2
C2
Cc1 Cc2
M
Helical coil model
Ch
Lh
Rh
Cp
AC
Fig. 4. Equivalent analytical model of the inductively coupled system
K is the coupling coefcient can be analytically calculated as
a function of distance x by using the approximation dened
in [6] and given in 3.
K(x) = (
(r
S
r
R
)
x
2
+r
S
)
2
3 (3)
Where r
S
and r
R
are the radius of the test micro coil and loop
antenna.
III. RESULTS
A. Measurement results
Open loop test micro coils are inductively coupled to the
designed helical coil as shown in gure 3. The developed
wireless analytical model and the measured signal are applied
to a non linear least square estimation routine. The best
extracted from the wireless measured impedance signal (both
real and imaginary parts) and are tted back to the wireless
analytical model (as given in equation 1).
1) Wired Characterization: Wired characterization of the
test micro coils were performed on 4 different dimensions
of test micro coils. The geometrical information and wired
parameters of the micro coils are given in table I and II.
TABLE I
GEOMETRICAL DATA OF MICRO COILS
Coil N turns Douter(mm) D
inner
(mm) H(mm) W
d
(m)
1 33 4.5 3.35 0.41 71
2 60 4.2 3.30 0.45 65
3 100 3.6 1.33 0.52 60
4 200 5.18 3.1 1.17 80
TABLE II
WIRED MEASUREMENT OF MICRO COILS
Coil Lw(H) Cw (pF) Rw () Qw factor fw(MHz)
1 10.1 0.968 270 11.95 50.93
2 16.8 1.27 248 14.63 34.47
3 14.04 0.961 340 11.23 43.35
4 164 3.73 906 7.32 6.43
Where D
outer
,D
inner
,H and W
d
are the test micro coils
outer diameter, inner diameter, height and wire width. With
Lw,Cw , Rw , Qw and fw are wired inductance, distributed
capacitance, resistance, quality factor and resonance frequency
of the tested micro coils.
2) Wireless measurement: Figure 5 and 6 shows the ana-
lytical t and the wireless measurement of real and imaginary
impedance of test micro inductor with 33 turns and a measured
wireless self resonance frequency of 50.14 MHz

4 10
7
5 10
7
6 10
7
7 10
7
8 10
7
2
4
6
8
Frequency [Hz]
Analytical fit
Wireless measurement
Re (Z)
Fig. 5. Wirelessly measured impedance real part and analytical t
4 10
7
5 10
7
6 10
7
7 10
7
8 10
7
40
50
60
Analytical fit
Wireless measurement
Im (Z)
Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 6. Wirelessly measured impedance imaginary part and analytical t
Similarly loaded Q factor is calculated by measuring the
return loss signal and using the half power bandwidth for-
mula (as described in [7]) as given in 4.
Q
L
=
fwm
f
(halfpowerbandwidth)
(4)
Where fwm is the wirelessly measured resonance frequency
and f is the frequency drift between the lower and upper half
power bandwidth points measured from the return loss signal.
The wireless resonance frequency of the open ended test micro
coils can be calculated by using the following equation 5.
fwc =
1
2

L
2
C
(5)
Where C is given in equation 6 which is the test micro
coil capacitance C
2
inuenced by the series combination of
frequency depended coupling capacitances.
C = C
2
+
C
c1
C
c2
C
c1
+C
c2
(6)
Table IV contains the wirelessly measured (fwm)and calcu-
lated resonance frequency (fwc) using equation 5 and 6.
TABLE III
WIRELESSLY MEASURED OPEN LOOP MICRO COILS PARAMETERS
Coil L
2
(H) C
2
(pF) R
2
() Q
L
factor
1 9.52 1.15 252 11.15
2 15.81 1.45 232 12.95
3 13.20 1.16 318 10.16
4 154.8 4.1 848 6.42
TABLE IV
WIRELESSLY MEASURED AND CALCULATED RESONANCE FREQUENCIES
Coil fwm(MHz) fwc (MHz)
1 50.14 48.12
2 34.23 33.87
3 41.65 40.9
4 6.62 6.54
B. Simulation results
1) 3D model: To visualize the magnetic eld behavior of
the designed helical coil, a 3D model in HFSS is constructed
and is shown in gure 7. In this simulation model instead
of placing the test micro coil a sphere region is created
at the center position where the test micro coil is placed.
Non uniform magnetic eld distributions can be visualized
from the sphere region as shown in gure 8 which changes
inconsistently due to the unsymmetrical structure and non
uniform current distribution around the helical turns.
mm
mm
mm
Helical coil
Test micro coil
placement
region
Fig. 7. 3D simulation model of the Helical Coil
2) 2D FEM model of the inductively coupled system: To
numerically compute the micro inductors parameters, a 2D
FEM model in COMSOL Multiphyscics is developed. All
the wirelessly tested micro coil were air cored, multi turns
and multi layered with the double insulated copper wire of
polyurethane (base coating) and (top coating) of polyamide.
mm
mm
mm
Sphere radius= 5.65mm
Sphere volume= 760mm
3
Fig. 8. Magnetic eld behavior of the helical coil
2D Cross section array
of test micro coil

2D Cross section of
Helical coil
Fig. 9. 2D FEM model for the inductively coupled system
A simplied geometry in 2D axial asymmetrical is shown
in 9. Test micro inductor structure (as shown in gure 9)is
constructed using a 2D cross section array of circular loops
(each loop modeling a 2D cross section of insulated copper
wire) as done in [5].The helical coil pair is modeled in 2D by
making 5 equally separated circular cross section of copper
wire modeling the helical coil specications. An Ac signal
is applied to the helical coil and inductively coupled to a
2D cross section array of a test micro coil with 33 turns. To
numerically calculate the micro coil parameters, the magnetic
ux s of the test micro coil at the constructed 2D coil array
boundary and the total induced current I
Total
through the
helical coil cross sections are calculated as given in equation
7.
L
S
=
s
I
Total
n
2
(7)
Where n is the number of turns of the test micro coil. The
capacitance of the micro coil is numerically calculated as given
in 8.
C
S
=
1
w
2
L
S
(8)
Table V contains the inductances L
S
, distributed capacitance
C
S
and the resonance frequency are numerically calculated
using COMSOL.
TABLE V
NUMERICALLY CALCULATED MICRO COIL PARAMETER IN COMSOL
Coil L
S
(H) C
S
(pF) f
S
(MHz)
1 9.41 1.165 48.14
2 15.52 1.39 34.23
3 12.80 1.14 41.65
5 151 3.83 6.62
IV. CONCLUSION
We report here wireless measurement of open loop micro
inductor parameters i.e. inductance, inter winding capacitance
,resistance and Q factor in non uniform magnetic elds
generated by an air core helical coil. A wireless analytical
model is developed for the loosely coupled systems. A
non linear least square estimation routine is developed
which uses the wirelessly measured impedance signal, the
wireless analytical model Z
wireless
including all the unknown
variables. The best estimated values of the unknown variables
from the routine are tted back and compared with wirelessly
measured signal which showed a strong agreement between
the estimated values and developed model. It is concluded
here that with helical coil it is possible to characterize
the micro coil parameters with a percentage error or drift
between wired and wireless measurement is less than %6.
A 3D simulation model is developed which shows the non
uniform magnetic eld distributions of the helical coil.
Further a 2D FEM analysis is performed by constructing
2D simplied geometry using COMSOL multiphyscics. The
simulation results for the Inductance and capacitance are
presented which are close to the wirelessly measured results..
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thanks German Federation of In-
dustrial Research Associations AIF,for supporting this project.
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