Shared Aperture Planar Array Antenna for Soil Moisture Radiometer

A shared aperture radiometer antenna system is developed to measure soil moisture. Currently, only L-band (1.4 GHz) radiometer are mostly being used to map the soil moisture which lacks resolution. This research explores the possibility of using multiple higher frequency band radiometers along with the traditional L-band radiometer to help downscale the radiometer footprint hence increasing the resolution. Starting from the scratch, single element antenna, array synthesis, beamforming and multi-band configuration have been discussed and necessary measurements have been presented.