Food companies worldwide must constantly engage in product development to stay competitive, cover existing markets, explore new markets, and meet key consumer requirements. This ongoing development places high demands on achieving quality at all levels, particularly in terms of food safety, integrity, quality, nutrition, and other health effects. Food product research is required to convert the initial product idea into a formulation for upscaling production with ensured significant results. Sensory evaluation is an effective component of the whole process. It is especially important in the last step in the development of new products to ensure product acceptance. In that stage, measurements of product aroma play an important role in ensuring that consumer expectations are satisfied. To this end, the electronic nose (e-nose) can be a useful tool to achieve this purpose. The e-nose is a combination of various sensors used to detect gases by generating signals for an analysis system. Our research group has investigated the scent factor in some foodstuff and attempted to develop e-noses based on low-cost technology and compact size. In this paper, we present a summary of our research to date on applications of the e-nose in the food industry.

In this paper, we focus on ambient radio frequency energy available from commercial broadcasting stations in order to provide a system based on RF energy harvesting using a new design of receiving antenna. Several antenna designs have been proposed for use in RF energy harvesting systems, as a pertinent receiving antenna design is highly required since the antenna features can affect the amount of energy harvested. The proposed antenna is aimed at greatly increasing the energy harvesting efficiency over Wi-Fi bands: 2.45 GHz and 5 GHz. This provides a promising alternative energy source in order to power sensors located in harsh environments or remote places, where other energy sources are impracticable. The dual-band antenna can be easily integrated with RF energy harvesting system on the same circuit board. Simulations and measurements were carried out to evaluate the antenna performances and investigate the effects of different design parameters on the antenna performance. The receiving antenna meets the required bandwidth specification and provides peak gain of more than 4 dBi across the operating band.

A deep analysis of the problem associated with oscillators as interface circuits for quartz-crystal-microbalance sensors, reveals that the so-called static capacitance of the sensor is one of the elements that makes the use of oscillators more critical for sensors applications. A phase-locked-loop based circuit specifically designed for compensating the parallel capacitance effects in quartz crystal resonator sensors is presented. This circuit permits the calibration of the external circuitry to the sensor and an accurate determination of the effective capacitive compensation. The system provides a continuous measurement of the motional series resonant frequency and motional resistance. An extension and automation of the proposed system for multiple sensor characterization is introduced. The theoretical analysis of the circuit along with the experimental results presented prove that the proposed system is a good alternative for quartz sensors characterization.

An extended Butterworth-Van Dyke (EBVD) model with frequency-independent parameters for the characterization of a resonant compound formed by a quartz crystal in contact with a finite viscoelastic layer contacting a semi-infinite viscoelastic medium is extracted by analysis of the lumped element model. The formulation of the EBVD model is compared with the complete expression of the electrical admittance of the loaded quartz derived from the transmission line model (TLM). Relative deviations between them do not exceed 3% around 1% bandwidth near resonance. An extended Martin and Granstaff's model and an explicit expression for the frequency shift that supposes an extension of Kanazawa's model for viscoelastic media are obtained. An analysis of the errors associated with the extraction of shear parameters of the coating for different materials prove that, to obtain an error less than 5% in the shear parameters determination, the viscoelastic contribution, defined as the relative error in the thickness computed from the frequency shift by Sauerbrey equation, must be greater than a limit that depends on Q, which is defined as the ratio of the shear storage modulus (G') to shear loss modulus (G"). In the materials studied polymers in the transition range or in the rubbery state with Q=1 and 10, the viscoelastic contribution must be higher than 15% and 50%, respectively, for a 5% limit error in the shear parameters extraction. A criterion for a practical determination of the appropriate viscoelastic regimes is indicated.

This paper reports on the fabrication of a capacitive-type relative humidity (RH) sensor using screen printing processes for electrode film deposition. The applied measurement method based on microcontrollers is also reported. In this specific case, the microcontroller is used to measure RH by means of a capacitive sensor with a simple low-cost electronic system. In addition, a comparison between two different types of polyester substrates [Melinex (DuPont) and CG3460 (3M)] is shown. Both polyester substrates have similar properties, and only the thickness is different (175 μm for Melinex and 100 μm for CG3460). A nonlineal response has been obtained in this type of sensors. In order to linearize the response and reduce the external hardware, an artificial neural network embedded into the microcontroller has been used.

A new electronic design for continuous motional series resonant frequency monitoring of loaded quartz crystal resonators is presented. Using this circuit, a low-cost method for a simple determination of equivalent circuit parameters of quartz crystal resonators is described. Measurements made with the proposed system on typical AT cut quartz crystals are in good agreement with those of an impedance analyzer.