Wideband In-Situ Measurement of Soil Electrical Parameters Using Planar Dipole Antennas

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a wideband insitu probe for measurement of the dielectric properties of soil. A three-dimensional FDTD simulation is used to predict the performance of the probe. The probe uses wideband printed dipole antenna for the transmitting and receiving antennas. The transmitting antenna radiates a differentiated Gaussian pulse that propagates in the soil under investigation. The soil parameters are extracted by mapping the measured complex S21 parameter to the values obtained from the FDTD simulation.