Fiber Optic Thermo-Hygrometers for Soil Moisture Monitoring

This work deals with the fabrication, prototyping, and experimental validation of a fiber optic thermo-hygrometer-based soil moisture sensor, useful for rainfall-induced landslide prevention applications. In particular, we recently proposed a new generation of fiber Bragg grating (FBGs)-based soil m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2017-06, Vol.17 (6), p.1451
Main Authors: Leone, Marco, Principe, Sofia, Consales, Marco, Parente, Roberto, Laudati, Armando, Caliro, Stefano, Cutolo, Antonello, Cusano, Andrea
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs)
fiber optic thermo-hygrometer
Fiber optics
Hygrometers
landslide early warning system
Landslides
Moisture
Moisture content
Optical fibers
Prototyping
Rainfall
Rangefinding
Sensors
Soil moisture
soil moisture sensors
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This work deals with the fabrication, prototyping, and experimental validation of a fiber optic thermo-hygrometer-based soil moisture sensor, useful for rainfall-induced landslide prevention applications. In particular, we recently proposed a new generation of fiber Bragg grating (FBGs)-based soil moisture sensors for irrigation purposes. This device was realized by integrating, inside a customized aluminum protection package, a FBG thermo-hygrometer with a polymer micro-porous membrane. Here, we first verify the limitations, in terms of the volumetric water content (VWC) measuring range, of this first version of the soil moisture sensor for its exploitation in landslide prevention applications. Successively, we present the development, prototyping, and experimental validation of a novel, optimized version of a soil VWC sensor, still based on a FBG thermo-hygrometer, but able to reliably monitor, continuously and in real-time, VWC values up to 37% when buried in the soil.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s17061451