On A Novel Precipitation Estimation Method Based On Mobile Communications Base Station Signal:Preliminary Results

To estimate the precipitation amount from communication signal attenuation is a relatively novel and promising method for its good measurement accuracy and high spatio-temporal resolution. This paper calculated the rain attenuation of Fuzhou,May 4-5, 2014 and May 20-22, 2016, respectively based on the rain attenuation forecast model and Mie scattering given by ITU. Using the observation data of Fuzhou rainfall station, mobile communication base station and weather radar, the feasibility of inversion of the precipitation distribution in the Fuzhou area through the signal attenuation of the mobile communication base station is verified under different rain intensity and different electromagnetic wave frequency, and the accuracy and advantages and disadvantages of the three methods for estimating precipitation are discussed. Results show that the mobile base station measurement tends to be overestimated compared with rain gauge measurement on the whole, the results are more accurate with light rain conditions, the average rain is only 0.1mm /h,with the average deviation of 0.3mm / h, but the correlation coefficient between these two measurements is as high as 0.92. In contrast, the rainfall estimation from precipitation radar tends to be underestimated relative to the rain gauge measurement, and the location where the largest precipitation falls has large relatively errors for the maximum deviation of up to 20km. But the correlation coefficient between both measurements is only 0.82. In general, the method using the electromagnetic waves at 0.9 GHz and 2.4 GHz to measure the results of heavy rain and light rain is stable. The key findings obtained here indicate that the method is promising for quantifying the precipitation distribution, and has the potential to serve as a complementary to existing methods to estimate precipitation.