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Measurement of Crop Water by on Site Radiometry
Conference proceeding

Measurement of Crop Water by on Site Radiometry

Richard Cirone, Brian Hornbuckle and Anton Kruger
IGARSS 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, pp.4347-4350
09/26/2020
DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS39084.2020.9323774

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Abstract

A 433 MHz radio link was installed in a central Iowa corn canopy just after the crop's emergence to measure the amount of water stored in vegetation. Three transmitters, which the corn would grow above, where separated from the receiver by a horizontal distance of 50 m. Antennas operated for 68 days during the summer of 2018, while plants grew from a height of 0.3 m to 2.7 m. Water content of the corn by an observed weakened signal incident on the receiver. An existing empirical model for corn dielectric constant was used when modeling signal strength, applying in situ vegetation measurements. Interference with the ground-reflected signal was accounted for; the ground signal acts destructively with the direct propagation path in this experiment. Early in the growing season, signal strength is modeled rather well. When ears were present, the modeled signal is much stronger than the observed. This may be the result of neglecting scattering, which may be significant as the radiation was vertically polarized and likely strongly affected by the large vertical stems of the crop.
attenuation Soil moisture Poles and towers Vegetation mapping Refractive index Moisture Corn Skin Antennas microwave

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