Design of Soil Moisture Sensor for Validation of Passive Microwave Remote Sensed Soil Moisture Data

Soil Moisture is an important parameter that is of immense importance in the field of civil engineering, agriculture and ecology. Development of weather patterns and intake of nutrient by plants depend on soil moisture. In this paper, the design of sensor is described that uses the electrical resistance attribute of soil moisture. The soil moisture product of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 on board GCOM satellite of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is then compared with the soil moisture obtained from the designed sensor. Analysis shows the variability of the soil moisture values measured by both the satellite as well as the actual soil moisture measured by gravimetric method for the samples collected from different locations. The designed sensor shows similar variations in its output. Hence, the designed sensor can be used for checking the variations happening in soil moisture values instantaneously and can be used to validate the soil moisture product of remote sensing satellites for different locations