Soil moisture monitoring is an integral part of the modern agriculture industry and is crucial for farmers in determining the amount of water that their crops receive.

Available soil moisture monitoring probes range from large astronomically expensive radar systems for landscape measurement to small handheld size probes for localised detection. The latter are split into more costly Time Domain Reflectometry probes with accurate readings and capacitance probes that are not so reliable and highly soil-type dependent, but extremely cheap to produce. As a group our aim is to design and construct a soil moisture monitor that combines the advantages of high accuracy and low cost and is independent of the composition of the soil. Furthermore, the monitor should be capable of showing the relevant figures on a LCD display.

Through the use of Frequency Domain Reflectometry (FDR), we aim to utilise an innovative design that has previously been unexplored. Changes in the dielectric constant of the soil, which are highly dependent on the amount of moisture in the soil, are detected through the use of FDR technology. The major issues that we aim to overcome include successfully reducing the calibration dependencies on soil-type, and reducing the interference of salinity on the measurements.

Professor Rod Tucker, Aditya Josyula, Jackson Fung, Associate Professor Marimuthu Palaniswami