A Concept For Multistatic Radar Tomography Of Crop Root Zone Soil Moisture

Irrigation informed by soil moisture conditions maximizes crop yield by mitigating stress from under-watering and nutrient deficiencies, stunted growth, and fruiting reduction from over-watering. Scalable methods for monitoring depth-dependent soil moisture at crop root zones are needed to fully quantify water available to crops. We aim to develop a drone-based multistatic radar system for 3D retrievals of water content and soil composition. Here, we present our current progress towards this goal which includes a trade study of penetration depth versus attenuation and our current implementation of a Finite-Difference Time-Domain Full Wave Inversion implemented in python. Once completed, we hope that this multistatic radar tomography method will enable root-zone soil moisture sensing to inform irrigation practices for maximized yield and improved food security.