Soil moisture dielectric measurement using microwave sensor system

• Main Authors: Then, Yi Lung, You, Kok Yeow, Dimon, Mohamad Ngasri
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/59478/; http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISANP.2014.7026548
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

A microwave sensor system has been developed to operate from 2.2 GHz to 4.4 GHz and used to determine the change of soil dielectric constant with various values of gravimetric moisture content from 0% to 26%. Soil samples are placed on a microstrip ring resonator (MRR) sensor and the respective incident and reflected voltages are measured and converted into magnitude of return loss, |S11|. The calculated return loss, |S11| is then correlated with corresponding soil moisture content obtained from oven drying method and also the soil permittivity obtained from commercial dielectric probe with vector network analyzer.