CONSIDERATIONS ON THE USE OF TIME-DOMAIN REFLECTOMETRY (TDR) FOR MEASURING SOIL-WATER CONTENT

Time-domain reflectometry (TDR) is becoming an increasingly popular technique for measuring soil water content. It is based on measuring the dielectric constant of soil from the propagation velocity of a pulse travelling along an electromagnetic transmission line embedded in the soil. Although various designs of transmission line have been proposed, there have been no attempts to contrast these designs to enable the experimenter to select an appropriate system. A second area which needs consideration is the choice of calibration function, as the use of an empirical calibration with no physical basis persists. In this paper, transmission line design (balanced and unbalanced) is discussed and a simple linear calibration function based on refractive index is developed.