Frequency selection for ground monitoring using propagation characteristics

Abstract

Abstract Ground monitoring can be used for observing ground structure changes or other specific objectives. Rather than using expensive ground penetration radar, the ground propagation characteristics may be able to describe the structure changes. Ground propagation can be evaluated by using a simple radio transmitter and receiver. This paper employs a vector network analyzer (VNA) to explore ground propagation characteristics. As the available VNA works from 500 MHz to 1 Ghz, the paper proposes how to select suitable frequency for ground monitoring. Tangential comparison between mathematical model and direct measurement is proposed. The result shows that the selected frequency exerts promising propagation characteristic even dough signal diffraction causes irregular signal strength at the receiver.