Low-Frequency Drone-Borne GPR for Soil Conductivity Mapping

Summary In this study, we proposed a low-frequency drone-based GPR for soil conductivity mapping. The lightweight radar system consists of a handheld VNA, a microcomputer, a differential GPS and a power bank. A 5-meter half-wave dipole antenna is used to provide the operating frequency range of 15-45 MHz. For the data processing, antenna-drone effects are filtered out with the antenna transfer functions generated from calibration, and 3-D LUT is used for fast and robust inversion. The soil conductivity is obtained from point measurements using kriging interpolation. The result shows a good spatial correlation, and reasonable conductivity values comparing with EMI, which initially proves the concept of drone-borne GPR for soil conductivity mapping.