Measurement of Typic Quartzipsamment Soil Permittivity at Different Depths

This work presents the characterization of the electrical permittivity of typic quartzipsamment soil, found in the Restinga de Cabedelo National Forest (Cabedelo FLONA). For measurement, a rectangular resonant cavity was constructed, excited by a waveguide iris and the cavity perturbation technique was employed. The 16451B Vector Network Analyzer was used to measure the resonance frequency shift when the cavity is loaded with the material sample. For validation, the coaxial probe technique was used, through Dielectric Probe 85070 software. Results were presented for soils collected at different depths. The results show that the permittivity has small variation with depth, being higher in the shallower layers, with more organic matter. It was also verified a variation of the dielectric loss of the soil with the depth and variable with the frequency, indicating that it is possible to identify soil properties through the measurement of the dielectric properties.