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Abstract Knowledge of water content (WC) in soil is especially necessary in agriculture to assess the individual irrigation state of the plant. Therefore, there is a need to develop sensors able to measure WC in large volumes and in possibly wide frequency range, eg by modifications of the classical open-ended (OE) probes which are characterized by low penetration depth of electromagnetic waves. The objective of the research presented in this paper was to test the performance of an open-ended dielectric probe with an antenna (OE-A) in the frequency range 1 MHz–6 GHz for three mineral soils using vector network analyzer (VNA) one port (reflective) measurements. Firstly, numerical simulations of the probe using Ansys HFSS software were performed, followed by the probe calibration on reference materials and measurements of the soil samples to determine soil moisture. The simulation and measurement …