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      A Novel Low-Cost Instrumentation System for Measuring the Water Content and Apparent Electrical Conductivity of Soils

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          Abstract

          The scarcity of drinking water affects various regions of the planet. Although climate change is responsible for the water availability, humanity plays an important role in preserving this precious natural resource. In case of negligence, the likely trend is to increase the demand and the depletion of water resources due to the increasing world population. This paper addresses the development, design and construction of a low cost system for measuring soil volumetric water content (θ), electrical conductivity (σ) and temperature ( T), in order to optimize the use of water, energy and fertilizer in food production. Different from the existing measurement instruments commonly deployed in these applications, the proposed system uses an auto-balancing bridge circuit as measurement method. The proposed models to estimate θ and σ and correct them in function of T are compared to the ones reported in literature. The final prototype corresponds to a simple circuit connected to a pair of electrode probes, and presents high accuracy, high signal to noise ratio, fast response, and immunity to stray capacitance. The instrument calibration is based on salt solutions with known dielectric constant and electrical conductivity as reference. Experiments measuring clay and sandy soils demonstrate the satisfactory performance of the instrument.

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          A method of measuring soil moisture by time-domain reflectometry

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            Application of Soil Electrical Conductivity to Precision Agriculture

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              A real-time wireless smart sensor array for scheduling irrigation

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                Sensors (Basel)
                Sensors (Basel)
                sensors
                Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
                MDPI
                1424-8220
                05 October 2015
                October 2015
                : 15
                : 10
                : 25546-25563
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Control and Automation Engineering and Fundamental Techniques, School of Mines, Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP)—campus Morro do Cruzeiro, sn, 35400-000 Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil; E-Mail: pmemop@ 123456gmail.com
                [2 ]Department of Agricultural Engineering, Federal University of Viçosa (UFV)—Avenida P.H. Rolfs, sn, 36570-900 Viçosa, MG, Brazil; E-Mails: j.helvecio.martins@ 123456gmail.com (J.H.M.); rubensufv1961@ 123456gmail.com (R.A.O.)
                [3 ]Vale Institute of Technology (ITV)—Avenida Juscelino Kubitschek, 31, Bauxita, 35400-000 Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil; E-Mail: gustavo.medeiros.freitas@ 123456itv.org
                Author notes
                [†]

                These authors contributed equally to this work.

                [* ]Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: alankardek2@ 123456gmail.com ; Tel.: +55-31-8866-6595; Fax: +55-31-3559-1533.
                Article
                sensors-15-25546
                10.3390/s151025546
                4634517
                26445049
                cfb77632-c732-4f2a-aa38-2a02fb409232
                © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

                This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 28 July 2015
                : 25 September 2015
                Categories
                Article

                Biomedical engineering
                dielectric constant,electrical conductivity,self-balancing bridge,microcontroller,embedded system

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