A Single-Probe On-Site Method of Measuring the Dielectric Constant And Conductivity of Soft Earth Media over a 1-GHz Bandwidth

A single-conductor transmission line inserted into the ground is used to measure the frequency-dependent dielectric constant and conductivity of soils and other soft earth media up to at least 1 GHz, as a function of depth. Wide band pulses are launched up the line from a transmitting stub at the tip, and a computer is used to Fourier transform the pulses received at the surface and compute the frequencydependent electrical parameters. If computer use is inconvenient, singlevalue measurements can be made directly from the received pulses.