 |
| Titel |
Prediction of rainfall intensity measurement errors using commercial microwave communication links |
| VerfasserIn |
A. Zinevich, H. Messer, P. Alpert |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
|
| Sprache |
Englisch
|
| ISSN |
1867-1381
|
| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques ; 3, no. 5 ; Nr. 3, no. 5 (2010-10-12), S.1385-1402 |
| Datensatznummer |
250001299
|
| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/amt-3-1385-2010.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
| Zusammenfassung |
Commercial microwave radio links forming cellular communication networks are
known to be a valuable instrument for measuring near-surface rainfall.
However, operational communication links are more uncertain relatively to
the dedicated installations since their geometry and frequencies are
optimized for high communication performance rather than observing rainfall.
Quantification of the uncertainties for measurements that are non-optimal in
the first place is essential to assure usability of the data.
In this work we address modeling of instrumental impairments, i.e. signal
variability due to antenna wetting, baseline attenuation uncertainty and
digital quantization, as well as environmental ones, i.e. variability of
drop size distribution along a link affecting accuracy of path-averaged
rainfall measurement and spatial variability of rainfall in the link's
neighborhood affecting the accuracy of rainfall estimation out of the link
path. Expressions for root mean squared error (RMSE) for estimates of
path-averaged and point rainfall have been derived. To verify the RMSE
expressions quantitatively, path-averaged measurements from 21 operational
communication links in 12 different locations have been compared to records
of five nearby rain gauges over three rainstorm events.
The experiments show that the prediction accuracy is above 90% for
temporal accumulation less than 30 min and lowers for longer
accumulation intervals. Spatial variability in the vicinity of the link,
baseline attenuation uncertainty and, possibly, suboptimality of wet antenna
attenuation model are the major sources of link-gauge discrepancies. In
addition, the dependence of the optimal coefficients of a conventional wet
antenna attenuation model on spatial rainfall variability and, accordingly,
link length has been shown.
The expressions for RMSE of the path-averaged rainfall estimates can be
useful for integration of measurements from multiple heterogeneous links
into data assimilation algorithms. |
| |
|
| Teil von |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|