Fort A. P. Hill Soil Permittivity and Conductivity Measurements for the Wide Area Airborne Minefield Detection Program

This report discusses the soil permittivity and conductivity measurements at various test environment locations at Ft A.P. Hill for use in modeling predictions in support of the Wide Area Airborne Mine Detection (WAAMD) program. The WAAMD sensor suite consists of four optical sensors and three radar systems. The radars are stand-alone systems operating in different bands: Mirage (300-2800 MHz), Stanford Research Institute (200-450 MHz), and Veridian (8.16-10 GHz). Soil sample sites were located in the drop zone, Lightweight Airborne Mine Detection (LAMD) area, and Area 71A. The drop zone was divided into six test environments. The environments consisted of mines in (1) bare dirt, (2) short grass, and (3) tall grass, and backgrounds of the (4) bare dirt, (5) short grass, and (6) tall grass. The backgrounds were sections of the test sites used to provide ambient data (no mines) of the test environments. Two soil sample sites were selected for characterizing the mines in bare dirt, three sites were selected for characterizing the mines in tall grass, and two sites were selected for characterizing the mines in short grass. A single site was selected for each of the background areas. The LAMD site had four soil sample sites and Area 71A, lane 19 had two soil sample sites. There were 16 soil sample sites selected from these areas. Samples were taken on 21 October 02, 29 October 02, and 25 November 02. Permittivity and conductivity values were measured from 100 to 3000 MHz. The water mass per unit volume of the soil was calculated after completing permittivity and conductivity measurements.Army Research Lab Adelphi is the author of 'Fort A. P. Hill Soil Permittivity and Conductivity Measurements for the Wide Area Airborne Minefield Detection Program', published 2003 under ISBN 9781423547761 and ISBN 1423547764.