Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) is a well-established technique for the development of microwave sensors devoted to the dielectric characterization of materials. In particular the TDR has become the standard method for measuring soil water content. Although the response of the TDR signal is strictly related to the medium moisture content, it is also affected by several others factors related to...

During the past decades, natural hazards such as floods, landslides and forest fires have caused major loss of human lives and the destruction of economic land social infrastructure, as well as environmental damages. The Italian National Project: PROSA (PRodotti di Osservazione Satellitari per l'Allerta Meteorologica) is a pilot project funded by the Italian Space Agency, which aims at contribu...

The importance of moisture content for sediment dynamics in coastal environments is well documented, particularly reference to aeolian transport (Davidson-Arnott, 2005). Tidally-induced changes partially saturated environments, such as beaches, cause significant surface shear strength through the development suction stresses, which can affect erodibility (Sassa and Watabe, 2007). Thus, accurate...

Fringing electric and magnetic field sensors are widely used for non-destructive measurements of material properties. A simple conventional fringing field sensor consists of a sensor head, a current or voltage source, an impedance measurement circuit, and data processing/data acquisition capability. The sensor head is usually a patterned array of electrodes or windings on an electrically insula...

An agrarian sensorial system based on temperature, moisture, and all solid-state ion-selective potentiometric sensors was developed with the objective of monitoring the behavior of H+ and Ca2+ ions in soil and in real conditions, contributing with a new tool that tries to complement the current precision agriculture technology. The evaluation of the sensorial system to pH monitoring presented a...

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), will be launched in the second half of 2009. It will be the first L-band (~1.4 GHz) passive microwave satellite specifically designed for global soil moisture observations, with an expected accuracy for the retrieved soil moisture of ~0.04 m/m. While passive microwave observations have been widely...

To the Editor:—I read with great interest the report by Cantillo et al., regarding malfunction of flow sensors on the Datex-Ohmeda 7900 SmartVent (Madison, WI). Our department owns 15 such ventilators. We too experienced moisture buildup resulting in problems generating the desired tidal volume. Similar to the authors, our anesthesia assistants and engineers were asked to replace sensors, or th...

The majority of the building-stock from before 1900 has been erected with natural hydraulic lime-based mortars in massive masonry. Due to the low modulus of elasticity of lime-based mortars there has never been a need for dilation joints in old masonry structures. Changes in shape as a result of expansion and contraction, due to hot/cold cycles, could be “followed” by these masonry structures w...

This paper describes nice fault tolerant topology layout to broaden the WSN successfully. Here set up the sensors on the agriculture discipline inside the form of mesh topology due to the fact is the efficient and fine one to shape the wireless sensor community, which satisfies all of the traits that depends to improve the performance and the first-class of provider. Put in force a singular set...