Preliminary Investigation of Small Scale Spatial Variability of Rain Intensity Using a Rain Gauge Network for Mm-Wave Propagation Application

Small-scale spatial distribution of rainfall rate is crucial to determine the millimetre-wave performance of the 5G system, especially in the heavy region. An accurate prediction of wave propagation between the transmitter and receiver through such rain profiles could be derived based on the physical soundness of local peculiarities. This work aims to investigate such knowledge of small-scale rain profiles by means of rain gauge networks data in UTM, Johor, Malaysia. Several rain events were carefully selected and critically analyzed to identify the small-scale spatial distribution of rainfall intensity. Such preliminary work focuses only on the low rain rate profile below 50 mm/h. The initial results obtained in this work are encouraging and suggest that the low rain intensity profile follows exponential distribution; however, the soundness of the results should be further examined with respect to the complete rain cell profile in this region. Nevertheless, it is believed that this work should provide radio propagation engineers with an early insight into the design of the 5G system in heavy rain regions.