A RADAR SYSTEM TO DETECT SOIL SURFACE UNDER PLANT/VEGETATION

For more accurate height/depth control of the agricultural implements , the soil surface as a reference position should be measured as accurate as possible. A new measurement system using microwave was developed to detect the true soil surface even under plant and/or vegetation. Two-frequency continuous-wave radar was used as the measurement system. It could estimate the distance to the target by measuring the phase difference between two different frequencies continuous-waves which reflected on the target surface. The system performance was evaluated on the barely field where the average height of barley was 91.5 cm. The experimental results showed that the system performance was not affected by the existence of barely. The maximum measurement errors were 8.91 com and 8.44cm for two different experimental plots.