Wood Moisture Content Measurement at 2.

45 GHz
Cristóbal Vallejos and Walter Grote
Electronic Engineering Department
Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Marı́a
Valparaı́so, Chile
walter.grote@usm.cl

Abstract—Wood, being one of the most widely used
construction materials by industry, relies on its moisture content
for strength, durability and malleable. Lumber industry has
long been searching for a non-destructive, accurate and fast
method to determine wood moisture. This paper evaluates the
performance of a 2.45 GHz measuring system that determines
moisture content from the estimated average densities by means
of establishing attenuation, phase shift and depolarization of
an electromagnetic wave propagating through 4 cm thick wood
samples. Specifically, moisture content of samples of Radiata
pine tree boards was established in the range of 0 to 68 %
using this technique with dry wood average density ranging
from 390 to 530 Kg/m3 and water average densities from 0 to
285 Kg/m3. This is an improvement of 2.4 times of previously
reported measurements.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic wave propagation; wood mois-
ture content
I. I NTRODUCTION
Since ancient times, wood has played an important role in
the development of mankind. Due to a number of desirable
structural properties, wood is still widely used in housing
projects, furniture, tools and art. However, its performance as
a building material for these applications depends heavily on
its moisture content, relative to the surrounding environment,
[1]. Wood moisture is determined dividing water density
by dry wood density. It is well known that wood shrinks
when its moisture content is below the fibre saturation point
(approximately 30 %); otherwise its dimensions remain
constant, [1]. Timber industry has long been searching for
a non-destructive, non-contacting, accurate, robust and fast
method to determine wood moisture content.
A traditional method for determining moisture content
in materials is to perform weight and size measurements
before and after removing the water content of the sample.
Unfortunately, this method has disadvantages. First, the
——————————————————————————————–
Manuscript received July 6th, 2009. This work was supported in part by
CONICYT project PBCT ACT-11-04, Fondecyt project 1095012 and project
UTFSM 23.09.65.
C. Vallejos is working on his M.Sc. in EE Thesis at the Electronic
Engineering Department of University Federico Santa Marı́a, to determine
wood moisture content.
W. Grote is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, University
Federico Santa Marı́a, Valparaı́so, Chile. (phone: 56-32-654208; fax: 56- 32-
797469; e-mail: walter.grote@usm.cl).
drying process is slow, depending on the wood sample
size and its moisture. Second, if the drying process is not
conducted carefully, lumber can suffer deformation and may
get damaged permanently. Also, while the slabs are being
measured, the remaining material has to be put on standby
for the time period it takes to determine its moisture content.
Although the traditional drying method is straightforward, it
is slow, destructive and contacting and therefore not attractive
for industrial applications. However, in spite of that, it is still
widely used as reference procedure for substitutes.
To measure changes of the electrical properties of wood
(conductance or capacitance) due to moisture content is
an alternative method widely used in the lumber industry.
However, it requires either a superficial application of
electrodes or to puncture electrodes into the lumber at
different places, leaving holes that deteriorate the material,
[2]. The method has the drawback of only estimating
superficial moisture on lumber samples. Besides, these
measurements are also time-consuming, since they require
human intervention. For these reasons, this method can be
classified as contacting, destructive, slow and non-accurate.
A more attractive alternative is to estimate wood moisture
content using microwaves, which satisfies all the desirable
qualities of a non-destructive, non-contacting, accurate,
robust and fast method simultaneously. This technique was
introduced by Kraszewski and Kulinski, who were able to
relate moisture content in materials linearly to measurable
electromagnetic properties. They estimated water and dry
sand average densities by detecting attenuation and phase
shift of an electromagnetic wave transmitted through a wet
sand mixture, [3]. Sometime later, King, and Yen applied this
concept to determine moisture in wood samples, developing a
microwave homodyne system operating at 10 GHz. However,
this publication focused on system design, without showing
conclusive results on determining moisture content in wood
samples, [4]. In [5] King, King and Woo proposed a similar
system operating at 4.9 GHz to determine moisture content
in grains. Years later, Torgovnikov studied the dielectric
properties of wood dependence on the orientation of the fiber,
[6]. Shen, Shajer and Parker estimated wood grain orientation
by measuring the electromagnetic wave depolarization due
to wood anisotropy, [7]. Finally, Schajer and Orhan could
 Fig. 1. Example of a Wood Sample [10]
accurately estimate dry wood average density, water average
density, moisture content and grain direction of 4 cm thick
wood samples, by measuring their electromagnetic wave
depolarization at 10 GHz, [8] and [9]. In addition, they found
no significant differences measuring Hemlock and Douglas
fir samples, estimating moisture content for both species for
a reduced range (7-28 %) with a 5 % of standard deviation.
Unfortunately, wood moisture content has been recorded by
other means up to 270 %, that is a range approximately 10
times the recorded one in their experiments. The limitation is
caused by the phase overlap that occurs in the electromagnetic
wave detection, which increases linearly per unit of density,
between -180◦ and 180◦ , but jumps from 180◦ to -180◦ at
that point.
Although these overlaps are inevitable, working at lower
frequencies, the rate at which phase changes is decreased and
thus the wood moisture detection range is extended. Based
on this idea, a 2.4 GHz measuring system was implemented
to estimate the moisture content of 4 cm thick Radiata pine
wood samples, using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA)
provided with antennas. Amplitude and phase measurements,
in presence and in absence of timber samples with different
moisture content were performed, so as to derive from the
collected data average dry wood and water densities.
II. E LECTROMAGNETIC P ROPAGATION T HROUGH W OOD
When an electromagnetic wave propagates through solid
wood it will encounter, in general, non-homogenous material,
as it is shown in Fig. 1. However, to represent the effects that
wood, water and free space have on the electromagnetic wave
propagation, it will be considered homogeneous by sections,
as it has been presented in [3], [5], [7], [8] and [9]. According
to this model, illustrated in Fig. 2, an electromagnetic wave
Fig. 2. Wood as a Three Layered Medium
propagating through a rectangular block of lumber will cross
three homogeneous sections: dry wood, free space and water,
each of its own thickness (∆d , ∆0 and ∆w ). While the
wood section thickness ∆l will remain constant throughout
the process of adding or removing water from the sample -
as long as no permanent damage is experienced because of
excessive dryness - the free space and water sections will vary
in thickness, depending on how much water is present in the
material to be analyzed.
A. Theoretical Background [8][9]
The complex electric field intensity E(z) of an electro-
magnetic wave, which is transmitted without reflections and
oblique incidences through an homogeneous and isotropic
medium of thickness ∆, is described as a function of the
position z by the following equation:
E(z) · ~x = Ei exp (−γ (z − z1 )) · ~x z1 ≤ z ≤ z2
γ = α + βj
∆ = z2 − z1 (1)
where Ei is the complex amplitude; E(z1 ) is the incident
wave; E(z2 ) is the transmitted wave; α, β and γ are the
attenuation, phase and propagation constants of the medium,
respectively; ~x is an unit vector, and j is an imaginary unit.
Because ∆ is directly proportional to the mass of the medium
that is encountered in the path of the wave, (1) can be used
for determining moisture content on wood.
 As stated before, a plank of lumber (l) is modelled as made A similar relation can be obtained for the components of the
up of three homogeneous sections: dry wood (d), free space (0) transmitted waves in presence of limber:
and water (w). In addition, dry wood is an orthotropic medium,  x    u 
El cos θ − sin θ El
which means that any incident wave will be depolarized if = (14)
Ely sin θ cos θ Elv
its polarization in not parallel (~u) or perpendicular (~v ) to
the grain direction. So, after applying (1) for each medium, Substitution of (2)-(5) in (13) and (14) gives:
and considering electric field continuity at any position, the  x 
El

U 0
  x 
E0
H
transmitted waves with respect to the wood grain directions = R R (15)
Ely 0 V Ey
(Elu and Elv ) are:   0
cos θ sin θ
R =
Elu = Eiu exp (−c1 ρd − γ0 ∆0 − c2 ρw ) (2) − sin θ cos θ
Elv = Eiv exp (−c3 ρd − γ0 ∆0 − c2 ρw ) (3) where H denotes the transpose operation of a matrix.
where Eiu and Eivare the incident waves; ρd and ρw are
the average densities of dry wood and water, respectively, If two different polarization are considered for the incident
whereas c1 , c2 and c3 are constants. By repeating the previous wave, one close to ~x direction and the other close to y~
procedure, the transmitted waves in absence of lumber can be direction, then U and V can be derived from (15):
expressed as follows:
p
U = p ∓ q 2 + t2 (16)
p
E0u = Eiu exp (−c4 ρd − γ0 ∆0 − c5 ρw ) (4) V = p ± q 2 + t2 (17)
xx yy xy yx yy xx yx xy
E0v = Eiv exp (−c4 ρd − γ0 ∆0 − c5 ρw ) (5) El E0 − El E0 + El E0 − El E0
p = (18)
2 (E0xx E0yy − E0yx E0xy )
By combining (2)-(5), transmission factors U and V are yy xy yx yy yx xy
Elxx E0 − El E0 − El E0xx + El E0
defined: q = (19)
2 (E0xx E0yy − E0yx E0xy )
Elu
U = = exp (−c6 ρd − c7 ρw ) (6) Elyx E0yy − Elyy E0yx + Elxy E0xx − Elxx E0xy
E0u t = (20)
Elv 2 (E0xx E0yy − E0yx E0xy )
V = = exp (−c8 ρd − c7 ρw ) (7)
E0v where E0xy is the component in the ~x direction of the
transmitted wave that is measured in absence of wood when
Then, after taking the magnitude (|U | and |V |) and phase
the radiated wave is polarized close to the y~ direction.
(∡U and ∡V ) of each transmission factor, ρd and ρw can
be obtained from (6) and (7):
Equations (16)-(20) make it possible to experimentally
ρd= r1 dB + r2 φ (8) determine wood moisture with an appropriate radiofrequency
ρw= r3 dB + r4 φ (9) measuring system.
20 log |U | + 20 log |V | III. E QUIPMENT AND M EASUREMENT S YSTEM
dB = (10)
2
∡U + ∡V A 2.4 GHz measuring system using a Vector Network
φ = (11) Analyzer (VNA: ZVRE, 0.009-4 GHz, Rohde & Schwarz),
2
ρw provided with antennas was implemented. Fig. 3 shows
mc% = × 100 (12) a schematic diagram of this system. The transmitting and
ρd
receiving Patch antennas (RE09P Hyperlink Technologies)
where mc% is the moisture content of wood (expressed as a were placed in boxes (48x48x58 cm3), removing one
percentage), and r1 , r2 , r3 and r4 are constants that can be of the walls of each of them to create an opening. The
expressed in terms of c6 , c7 and c8 . However, more relevant antennas were mounted on axles inserted in the center of
for determining wood moisture content experimentally, is to the wall opposite to the opening, to be manually rotated
consider r1 , r2 , r3 and r4 as regression coefficients that can and moved closer or further apart from the planks to be
be computed from measured data. measured. Since electromagnetic propagation measurements
can be considerably affected by diffraction, reflections and
The previous analysis assumes that the incident wave will interference, electromagnetic absorbent material (ECCOSORB
be polarized parallel or perpendicular to the grain direction. VHP-4) was attached to the inside surface of the walls, while
However, in practice this is not always true because the grain aluminium foil was used to cover the exterior.
direction θ is usually unknown. So, when the incident wave
is polarized in an arbitrary direction (Eix · x̂ + Eiy · ŷ), as is 17 Radiata pine wood samples (4x19x90 cm3) were used
shown in Fig. 2, the equivalent components in the principal to conduct the experiments. They were saturated with water
directions of wood are given by: and gradually dried while performing approximately 272 field
 u    x 
Ei cos θ sin θ Ei trials, each of them consisting of 8 electromagnetic properties
= (13)
Eiv − sin θ cos θ Eiy measurements, to be contrasted each time against mechanical
 700
Dry Wood
Water
600

Real Average Density Kg/m3

500

400

300

200

100

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Estimated Average Density Kg/m3

Fig. 4. Real vs. Estimated Average Densities

70

60

Real Moisture Content % 50

Fig. 3. Microwave Measurement System (a) view from above (b) side view 40

30

weight and volume of each wood sample. To perform the

microwave measurements, they were placed between the box
openings, at 15 cm from the antennas. Since the apertures of
the boxes were bigger than the width of the boards, water
filled 5 cm diameter PVC tubes were placed on each side
of the plank to attenuate possible diffraction (it was shown
experimentally that this was a very effective way of doing
do).
IV. E XPERIMENT
A series of experiments were conducted to determine the
regression coefficients r1 , r2 , r3 and r4 of the 17 Radiata
Pine wood samples mentioned in the previous section.
Each experiment consisted in placing the wood sample at
the space in front of the aligned boxes openings, making sure
that the PVC tubing would effectively cover the remaining
air gaps. After this, four measurements were conducted to
determine the values of Elxx , Elyx , Elxy and Elyy , by placing
the transmitting and receiving antennas at: 0◦ and 0◦ , 0◦ and -
90◦ , +90◦ and 0◦ , +90◦ and -90◦ , respectively. Then, the wood
sample was removed, and the same procedure was repeated
to determine the values of E0xx , E0yx , E0xy and E0yy . After
these measurements, wood transmission factor, U and V , could
be calculated using (16)-(20). The values of U and V were
used to calculate φ for each sample by means of (11) and
plotted against water average density values computed by the
traditional method of weighing the wood sample and recording
its dimensions. When it was found that water average density
20
10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Estimated Moisture Content %
Fig. 5. Real vs. Estimated Moisture Content
had a phase shift grater than 360◦, this data was discarded to
avoid the phase overlap error. As a result, only 116 of the 272
microwave measurements could be used. Then, calculations
were performed using (8)-(12) with the 116 measurements
results to determine the corresponding regression coefficients,
yielding the following values: r1 =-10.91 Kg/m3/dB, r2 =1.23
Kg/m3/◦ , r3 =-13.36 Kg/m3/dB and r4 =-0.16 Kg/m3/◦ . Finally,
with these values it was possible to estimate the values of ρd ,
ρw and mc%.
V. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Fig. 4 shows plots of real vs. estimated dry wood and
water average densities, whereas Fig. 5 shows a plot of
real vs. estimated moisture content. Fig. 4 reveals that the
water average density can be very well predicted by these
measurements. However Radiata pine wood is known for
having many knots and other non-homogeneous irregularities,
as it is shown in the wood sample of Fig. 1. In fact, the
 TABLE I
E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS , AS COMPARED TO [9] reduced from 10 to 2.45 GHz, which means that wood samples
thicknesses can be extended.
Wood Parameter Microwave Measurement System
2.45 GHz 10 GHz ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Range 387-526 325-625
ρm Kg/m3
Std. Dev. 44 30
The authors would like to thank Christian Paccot, for
Range 0-285 40-150 presenting us with a research problem that industry is in-
ρw Kg/m3
Std. Dev. 25.3 7.9 terested on solving, and Rodolfo Feick and Ricardo Olivares
mc% % Range 0-67.9 7-28 for sharing their insight when setting up the experiments for
Std. Dev. 5.1 1.9
measurements.
R EFERENCES
dry wood average density determined by the microwave
[1] Wood Handbook, “Wood as an engineering material”, Forest Product
measurement depends strongly on the wood sample that is Laboratory, Forest Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, chapter 3,
being illuminated by the electromagnetic radiation. While 1987.
performing microwave measurements, we did not measure [2] William L. James, “Electric moisture meters for wood”, Forest Product
Laboratory, Forest Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, pp. 1-17,
each wood plank to its full extent but just the part of it that 1988.
was exposed to the radiation during that experiment (actually [3] A. Kraszewski and S. Kulinski, “An improved microwave method of
less than 50 %). These measurements were then compared moisture measurement and control” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron. Control
Instrum., v. 23, no. 4, pp. 364370, 1976.
to the measurement outcomes of size and weight of the full [4] R.J. King, “Probing amplitude, phase, and polarization of microwave field
plank. This may explain part of the spread in the comparison distributions in real time”, IEEE transactions on Microwave Theory and
of dry wood average density outcomes shown in Fig. 4. In Techniques, vol. MTT29, no 11, pp. 1225-1231, 1981.
[5] R.J. King, K. V. King and K. Woo “Microwave moisture measurement of
spite of that, the moisture content can be predicted over a grains”, IEEE Trans. on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 41, no.
wide range with relative good precision, as it can be seen in 1, pp. 111-115, 1992.
Fig. 5. [6] G.I. Torgovnikov, “Dielectric properties of wood and wood-based mate-
rials”, Springer, Berlin, 1993.
[7] J. Shen, G. Schajer and R. Parker, “Theory and practice in measuring
Table I shows the covered range and the standard errors of wood grain angle using microwaves”, IEEE Transactions on Instrumen-
the three estimated parameters, which are compared with those tation and Measurement, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 803-809, 1994.
[8] Gary S. Schajer and F. Bahar. Orhan, “Microwave non-destructive testing
that were obtained using a 10 GHz microwave measurement of wood and similar orthotropic materials”, Sensing and Imaging Series,
system in [8] and [9]. The first row entry establishes that the Springer, NY, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 293-313, 2005.
density range of dry Radiate Pine wood is smaller than the [9] Gary S. Schajer and F. Bahar Orhan, “Measurement of wood grain angle,
moisture content and density using microwaves”, Holz als Roh- und
one recorded for Hemlock and Douglas fir samples. However, Werkstoff, Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, vol 64, no 6, pp. 483-490, 2006.
the standard deviation of the wood samples considered show [10] www2.puc.edu/Faculty/Gilbert Muth/art0059.jpg.
that it is to be expected that Radiata pine may show a larger
variation than Douglas fir, confirming the statement made in
the previous paragraph. Values from Table I also show that
if the frequency is reduced from 10 to 2.45 GHz, then the
estimated range of wood moisture content detection range
increases 2.4 times. Finally, the significant difference between
the standard deviation of the estimated water average densities
can be attributed to the omission of the temperature influence
in the model.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
The possibility of estimating dry wood average density,
water average density and moisture content on wood, using
a 2.45 GHz microwave measurement system, is presented and
compared to previous results obtained from the literature. We
have been able to show that dry Radiata pine wood densities
can be predicted with a standard deviation of 44 Kg/m3, which
we largely attribute to the fact that our measuring procedure
tried to predict the average density of a plank of wood from the
measured values taken of less than 50 % of its total size. The
average water density of that wood could be measured with
a standard deviation of 25.3 Kg/m3, but more important, the
wood moisture content could be established with a standard
deviation of 5.1 %, respectively. The estimated range of wood
moisture content is increased 2.4 times when the frequency is