Distributed Sensors Network Applied to the Rain Impairment Study on Radiocommunication Systems

The performance of millimetre wavelength wireless access network technologies are significantly impaired by rain effects. To evaluate the rain effects over a communication system, it is essential to know the temporal and spatial evolution of rainfall rate. For this reason it is necessary to develop an experimental network that provides sufficient data to study and establish means to prevent and compensate for the detrimental effects of rain. In this paper, an experimental rain gauge network is presented. This network comprises weather stations capable of measuring rainfall rate, temperature and humidity. The paper describes first the experimental network for automatic data acquisition as a system based in a distributed process. The design of the experimental network is explained in detail and finally the interest for millimetre wavelength applications is pointed out.