Self-Sensing Antenna for Soil Moisture: Beacon Approach

On the way from the Internet of things (IoT) to the Internet of underground things (IoUT) the main challenge is antenna design. The enabling technologies still rely on simple design and low cost, but the systems are more complex. The LoRa-based system combined with a machine learning approach can be used for the estimation of soil moisture by using signal strength data, but for the improvement of the system performance we propose the optimization of the antenna for underground use. The soil properties are frequency-dependent and varying in time, which may cause variations in the signal wavelength and input impedance of the antenna underground. Instead of using wideband antenna design or standard helical antenna provided in LoRa module, which are typical in the IoUT research community for communication links, we propose a narrow-band antenna design for the application in soil moisture sensing. It is shown that the approach of simply matching the antenna buried in dry sand can provide a substantial signal level difference, ranging from approximately 10 dB (achieved by proof-of-concept measurements) to as much as 40 dB (calculated by a full wave simulator) in reflection coefficient when the moisture content is being increased by 20%. This can ensure more reliable radio sensing in novel sensorless technology where soil moisture information is extracted from the signal strength of a transmitting device.