SOIL MOISTURE DETECTION USING ELECTRICAL CAPACITANCE TOMOGRAPHY (ECT) SENSOR

• Main Author: Abd.Karim, Nurzharina
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2011
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/8590/1/2011%20-%20Soil%20Moisture%20detection%20using%20electrical%20capacitance%20tomography%20%28ECT%29%20sensor.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/8590/

This report consists of five chapters which are introduction, literature review, methodology, results and discussions, and conclusion and recommendations. The introduction portion explains about the background of study of the project, problem statement, project objectives and scope of the study. The objectives of this project are to design an Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) sensor for soil moisture detection, calibration measurement for lower and higher permittivity material, and conducting online measurement to measure the percentage of moisture content in soil. The literature review describes the research about the project topic such as ECT technique and soil moisture measurement. ECT is a measurement technique used to obtain the visualization and measurement of a permittivity distribution in a cross section using multi-electrode capacitance sensor. The methodology part contains research methodology process flow, project activities with key milestone table as the attachment, tools required to run the project, and experimental procedure to conduct the experiment. The results and discussion contains the fabrication result of the ECT sensor, low calibration results, online measurement results, and discussion about the results obtained. The preliminary result shows that there is a positive correlation with increasing moisture percentage in soil. The conclusion consists of overall conclusion regarding the report. For future improvement, the experimental procedure will be improved by conducting a test on different types of soil. A simple wireless control system to control the irrigation event by detecting and analyzing the percentage of moisture in soil is recommended.