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Topband: measuring ground conductivity

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Subject: Topband: measuring ground conductivity
From: Carl K9LA <k9la@gte.net>
Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:53:56 -0400
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  All,

Since ground conductivity is an important parameter for our 160m efforts 
and it has been discussed previously on this reflector, I thought I'd 
mention that an interesting paper appeared in the recent IEEE 
Transactions on Broadcasting (Vol 55, No 2, June 2009). The list of 
authors, along with the abstract, is given below.

Carl K9LA

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Alternative Methods to Obtain Ground Conductivity
Raúl Ruiz, José Manuel Riera, Member, IEEE, and Jorge Montoya

Abstract - The radio planning of systems in lower frequency bands, such 
as LF and MF, makes use of ground conductivity at these frequencies, as 
it determines the attenuation of the surface wave, characteristic of the 
propagation in these bands. In this paper, three alternative methods to 
obtain an estimation of the conductivity are presented and compared. The 
first one is based on measurements of the electric field strength 
generated by AM transmitters. Although it is considered the most 
accurate, it is also the most expensive as it requires extensive and 
detailed measurements that are not always feasible. The second method 
relies on several terrain characteristics that are known to be related 
to the conductivity, and uses reference conductivity values from similar 
areas. The third method makes use of remote sensing data, information 
that is readily available worldwide at low cost. The methods are 
compared through their application in a research work carried out in 
Mexico. The results show that these approximate methods can yield 
results with reasonable accuracy, when compared with the results 
obtained from field strength measurements.


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