A dielectric approach to determine water content in soilusing microwave transmission technique at J-band

Abstract

The water content in three different types of soil has been measured in laboratory by using microwave transmission technique at room temperature. The measurement is very sensitive to volumetric water content. It is observed that there is slow increase in dielectric constant at lower per cent of water content, whereas it increases sharply at higher water content and becomes constant at certain value of water content in soil. It is interesting to observe that these variations have been found to be strongly dependent on the texture of soils. The value of dielectric constants decreases with the presence of excessive water due to ionic effect.