Abstract
Over the last two decades, prevalent technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) systems have been found to have potential for carrying out environmental monitoring. The data generated from these infrastructures are readily available and have the potential to provide massive spatial coverage. The costs involved in using these data are minimal since the records are already generated for the original uses of these systems. Commercial microwave links, which provide the underlying framework for data transfer between cellular network base stations, are one example of such a system and have been found useful for monitoring rainfall. Wireless infrastructure of this kind is deployed widely by communication providers across Africa and can thus be used as a rainfall monitoring device to complement the sparse proprietary resources that currently exist or to substitute for them where alternatives do not exist. Here we focus this approach’s potential to acquire valuable information required for agricultural needs across Africa using Kenya as an example.
Highlights
commercial microwave links (CMLs) constitute the infrastructure for data transmission in cellular communication networks and combine many of the characteristics required: measurements are taken over large areas and at ground level
An received signal level (RSL) value may change as a result of many factors, including variations in atmospheric conditions [39], white noise, or the system’s built-in quantizing error [44]
A rain gauge provides the most reliable measurement for a specific location. Due to their widespread deployment, newly available CML “sensors” provide a good alternative that can outperform conventional gauges, which are sparsely deployed in Africa
Summary
As the poorest continent in the world, Africa suffers from disease outbreaks, droughts, floods, a prevailing lack of water supply, and a generally degraded health environment [1,2,3,4]. Advanced weather radars can acquire extensive information about precipitation and the dynamics of rainstorms [10]. These instruments may face issues such as clutter effects, beam blockage caused by terrain obstacles, or errors and uncertainty in the derived surface QPEs [11,12,13]. Because of their high costs, radar systems are not widely deployed in Africa. The example of focus in this paper is the use of commercial microwave links (CMLs) for monitoring rainfall
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