LiqRay: non-invasive and fine-grained liquid recognition system

The existing RF-based liquid identification methods commonly require a training network of liquid or the container information, such as material and width. Moreover, status quo methods are inapplicable when the solution height is lower than that of the antenna, which is generally unknown either. This paper proposes LiqRay, an RF-based solution, retaining non-invasive and fine-grained liquid recognition abilities, thus can recognize unknown solutions without prior knowledge. In dealing with the unknown container material and width, we utilize a dual-antenna model and craft a relative frequency response factor, exploring diversity of the permittivity in frequency domain. In tackling the unknown heights of solution and antenna, we devise the electric field distribution model at the receiving antenna, solving the unknown heights via spatio-differential model. Among eight different solvents, LiqRay can identify alcohol solutions with a concentration difference of 1% with 94.92% accuracy. Nevertheless, LiqRay can obtain the relative frequency response factor with a relative error of 6.7% without being affected by the height of the solution. Even if it is merely 4 cm, this is fairly lower than that of most antennas' heights, since the operating frequency is around 2 GHz.