Soil density prediction tool using microwave ground penetrating radar

In this paper, a microwave surface reflection method is proposed to analyze the effect of soil density with its electrical properties using ground penetrating radar (GPR) principal. Three types of soil samples are chosen for the analysis of this project, namely sandy, loamy and clay. The work is based on measurement, simulation and model development. In the analysis, it is found that the average error percentages from the three developed models are 0.04%, 0.21% and 0.74% for sandy, loamy and clay soil, respectively. The effect of soil density with its electrical characteristics in terms of permittivity, propagation velocity and two-way wave travel time are also discussed. At the end of this paper, a soil density prediction tool is developed using the empirical models introduced consisting the density and attenuation for each soil sample at frequency range of 1.7 GHz to 2.6 GHz.