A healthy urban forest is important to improve both human health and overall environmental quality. There is currently a lack in technology that has the ability to evaluate living trees in their natural environment without invasive destructive sampling. This work presents a cost-effective, real-time microwave tomography system for practical forestry applications. The scattering measurement system is designed using wide band microstrip monopole antennas (1-5 GHz) and coupled to a switching matrix and a controlling software for automated real-time data collection. A time reversal signal processing algorithm is developed for performing imaging, based on the measurements. The imaging system is initially validated by imaging simple cylindrical targets and finally utilized for imaging defects in different tree trunk samples. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate the practicality, novelty and benefits of this approach for forestry imaging applications. INDEX TERMS.
The roots are a vital organ for plant growth and health. The opaque surrounding environment of the roots and the complicated growth process means that in situ and non-destructive root phenotyping face great challenges, which thus spur great research interests. The existing methods for root phenotyping are either unable to provide high-precision and high accuracy in situ detection, or they change the surrounding root environment and are destructive to root growth and health. Thus,we propose and develop an ultra-wideband microwave scanning method that uses time reversal to achieve in situ root phenotyping nondestructively. To verify the method’s feasibility, we studied an electromagnetic numerical model that simulates the transmission signal of two ultra-wideband microwave antennas. The simulated signal of roots with different shapes shows the proposed system’s capability to measure the root size in the soil. Experimental validations were conducted considering three sets of measurements with different sizes, numbers and locations, and the experimental results indicate that the developed imaging system was able to differentiate root sizes and numbers with high contrast. The reconstruction from both simulations and experimental measurements provided accurate size estimation of the carrots in the soil, which indicates the system’s potential for root imaging.
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