Mobile Radio Networks and Weather Radars Dualism: Rainfall Measurement Revolution in Densely Populated Areas

TL;DR

This paper explores using cellular base station signals as a distributed radar system for high-resolution urban rainfall measurement, leveraging existing infrastructure for real-time hydrometeorological data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to repurpose mobile network signals as weather radars, achieving unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution in urban rainfall sensing.

Findings

High-resolution rainfall data can be obtained from BS signals.

Clutter filtering techniques improve radar measurement quality.

Urban rainfall measurement can be revolutionized using existing telecom infrastructure.

Abstract

This study demonstrates, for the first time, how a network of cellular base stations (BSs) - the infrastructure of mobile radio networks - can be used as a distributed opportunistic radar for rainfall remote sensing. By adapting signal-processing techniques traditionally employed in Doppler weather radar systems, we demonstrate that BS signals can be used to retrieve typical weather radar products, including reflectivity factor, mean Doppler velocity, and spectral width. Due to the high spatial density of BS infrastructure in urban environments, combined with intrinsic technical features such as electronically steerable antenna arrays and wide receiver bandwidths, the proposed approach achieves unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions, on the order of a few meters and several tens of seconds, respectively. Despite limitations related to low transmitted power, limited antenna gain, and other system constraints, a major challenge arises from ground clutter contamination, which is exacerbated by the nearly horizontal orientation of BS antenna beams. This work provides a thorough assessment of clutter impact and demonstrates that, through appropriate processing, the resulting clutter-filtered radar moments reach a satisfactory level of quality when compared with raw observations and with measurements from independent BSs with overlapped field-of-views. The findings highlight a transformative opportunity for urban hydrometeorology: leveraging existing telecommunications infrastructure to obtain rainfall information with a level of spatial granularity and temporal immediacy like never before.