| Summary: | There exists many ways to detect the ripeness of a fruit, but most of the time these methods are destructive, like for example, pressing the fruit or extracting the juice
for chemical tests. The aim of this project is to develop a method to detect the degree of ripeness of a fruit without destroying it. This project is part of an ongoing effort carried out in USM. In this year's project, microwave signal will be used to detect the degree of ripeness of the fruit. Two axial mode helical antennas are used, one as the transmitter,
and the other as the receiver. The transmitter will radiate the microwave signal towards the fruit, and the receiver will pick up the microwave signal that is reflected from the
fruit. The strength of the reflected microwave signal will show how ripe the fruit is. This is because fruits with different degree of ripeness have different chemical (internal)
composition and the reflection of microwave signal will depend on the chemical composition. So, it is expected that fruits with different degree of ripeness will reflect
microwaves with different strength. The strength of the reflected microwave signal is also sampled at different instances using analogue-to-digital converters. Sampling is
needed to obtain the transient response of the reflected microwave signal. The transient
response pattern could also give information about the degree of fruit ripeness because,
fruits with different degree of ripeness will reflect microwave signal with different
transient response pattern. Bananas are used in this project. Two levels of banana
ripeness is tested, ripe and unripe. The results obtained are analysed to determine the
degree of ripeness of the bananas. The results do show some difference between ripe
and unripe bananas, therefore the concept of using microwave reflection to detect the
degree of fruit ripeness is feasible.
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