Non-contacting determination of moisture content in bulk materials using sub-nanosecond UWB-pulses

This paper presents a new approach of noncontacting moisture determination in hulk materials, which is independent of the mass per area of the material. It also dues not suffer from measurement ambiguities, which are well known from frequency domain methods. UWB quasi ganssian monocycle pulses are applied with a cycle width of approximately 400ps. The measurement signal is transmitted through the material over free space. The received signal is acquired in the time-domain and analysed, using multivariate calibration techniques. Principal component analysis and principal component regression yield the best results. Two different types of antennas and their influence on the accuracy of the measurements are investigated.