TDR response properties and their use in the estimation of soil permittivity

Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) is an important method for soil science applications. In this paper, the properties of the TDR responses of Debye's dielectrics are addressed and exploited to facilitate the estimation of soil permittivity. The study is based on the decomposition of the response into a sequence of echoes, and on the analysis of their relationship with the probe and the dielectric parameters. Practical rules for the selection of the measurement setup parameters and for the processing of the measured waveforms are given