Application of the two-microphone method for in-situ ground impedance measurements

The two-microphone method is a convenient and well-known procedure to measure the surface impedance in-situ. Its proposed implementation in an ANSI standard ("Direct Deduction of Ground Impedance") will contribute to it's wide use. The applicability and adequacy of this method for this purpose is investigated in this article. Measurements of the surface impedance of a number of grounds, which are carried out with the three ANSI S1.18 geometries, are presented. It is shown that the two-microphone method does provide reasonable results on not too hard grounds for frequencies above about 400 Hz, while the performance at lower frequencies and for hard grounds is poor. Practical advise is given on the number of measurements needed and the data pre-processing.