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Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity

Agriculture is a major consumer of freshwater and is often associated with low water productivity. To prevent drought, farmers tend to over-irrigate, putting a strain on the ever-depleting groundwater resources. To improve modern agricultural techniques and conserve water, quick and accurate estimat...

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Autores principales: Stellini, Justin, Farrugia, Lourdes, Farhat, Iman, Bonello, Julian, Persico, Raffaele, Sacco, Anthony, Spiteri, Kyle, Sammut, Charles V.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10256019/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37300083
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23115357
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author Stellini, Justin
Farrugia, Lourdes
Farhat, Iman
Bonello, Julian
Persico, Raffaele
Sacco, Anthony
Spiteri, Kyle
Sammut, Charles V.
author_facet Stellini, Justin
Farrugia, Lourdes
Farhat, Iman
Bonello, Julian
Persico, Raffaele
Sacco, Anthony
Spiteri, Kyle
Sammut, Charles V.
author_sort Stellini, Justin
collection PubMed
description Agriculture is a major consumer of freshwater and is often associated with low water productivity. To prevent drought, farmers tend to over-irrigate, putting a strain on the ever-depleting groundwater resources. To improve modern agricultural techniques and conserve water, quick and accurate estimates of soil water content (SWC) should be made, and irrigation timed correctly in order to optimize crop yield and water use. In this study, soil samples common to the Maltese Islands having different clay, sand, and silt contents were, primarily, investigated to: (a) deduce whether the dielectric constant can be considered as a viable indicator of the SWC for the soils of Malta; (b) determine how soil compaction affects the dielectric constant measurements; and (c) to create calibration curves to directly relate the dielectric constant and the SWC for two different soil types of low and high density. The measurements, which were carried out in the X-band, were facilitated by an experimental setup comprising a two-port Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) connected to a rectangular waveguide system. From data analysis, it was found that for each soil investigated, the dielectric constant increases notably with an increase in both density and SWC. Our findings are expected to aid in future numerical analysis and simulations aimed at developing low-cost, minimally invasive Microwave (MW) systems for localized SWC sensing, and hence, in agricultural water conservation. However, it should be noted that a statistically significant relationship between soil texture and the dielectric constant could not be determined at this stage.
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spelling pubmed-102560192023-06-10 Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity Stellini, Justin Farrugia, Lourdes Farhat, Iman Bonello, Julian Persico, Raffaele Sacco, Anthony Spiteri, Kyle Sammut, Charles V. Sensors (Basel) Article Agriculture is a major consumer of freshwater and is often associated with low water productivity. To prevent drought, farmers tend to over-irrigate, putting a strain on the ever-depleting groundwater resources. To improve modern agricultural techniques and conserve water, quick and accurate estimates of soil water content (SWC) should be made, and irrigation timed correctly in order to optimize crop yield and water use. In this study, soil samples common to the Maltese Islands having different clay, sand, and silt contents were, primarily, investigated to: (a) deduce whether the dielectric constant can be considered as a viable indicator of the SWC for the soils of Malta; (b) determine how soil compaction affects the dielectric constant measurements; and (c) to create calibration curves to directly relate the dielectric constant and the SWC for two different soil types of low and high density. The measurements, which were carried out in the X-band, were facilitated by an experimental setup comprising a two-port Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) connected to a rectangular waveguide system. From data analysis, it was found that for each soil investigated, the dielectric constant increases notably with an increase in both density and SWC. Our findings are expected to aid in future numerical analysis and simulations aimed at developing low-cost, minimally invasive Microwave (MW) systems for localized SWC sensing, and hence, in agricultural water conservation. However, it should be noted that a statistically significant relationship between soil texture and the dielectric constant could not be determined at this stage. MDPI 2023-06-05 /pmc/articles/PMC10256019/ /pubmed/37300083 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23115357 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Stellini, Justin
Farrugia, Lourdes
Farhat, Iman
Bonello, Julian
Persico, Raffaele
Sacco, Anthony
Spiteri, Kyle
Sammut, Charles V.
Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity
title Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity
title_full Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity
title_fullStr Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity
title_full_unstemmed Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity
title_short Broadband Measurements of Soil Complex Permittivity
title_sort broadband measurements of soil complex permittivity
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10256019/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37300083
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s23115357
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