An Approach for pH Evaluation of Agricultural Field Using AM Public Radio Waves.

The pH of soil is one of an important factor for agricultural field. In this paper, the noncontact evaluation of the pH using AM public radio waves was proposed with a fuss-free manner. As the first step of this consideration, the relative permittivities and dielectric loss tangents of soils with some pH levels in the ranges from 5.92 to 7.21 were investigated. By using the measured complex dielectric constants of the soils, the phase of the ground wave propagating along the air / soil interface was calculated as a function of the pH value to estimate the pH of the agricultural soil.