A Different Method Determining Dielectric Constant of Soil and Its FDTD Simulation

In this study, a different method determining the dielectric constant of soil via probes is presented. The method is based on the principle of measuring pulse delay in a given matter. The experimental study, which was carried out basically using an HP8753A vector network analyser, was repeated for various soil mixtures having different values of wetness. The results obtained from the measurements have clearly shown that the dielectric constant of the soil was increasing almost proportionally with that of the moisture content in the soil. The suitability of the measuring method was also checked with a number of simulation results obtained directly using the finite difference time domain method (FDTD).