Enhanced Estimation of Rainfall From Opportunistic Microwave Satellite Signals

Physical characteristics of precipitation, like temporal and spatial variability, jointly with coverage and costs of conventional meteorological devices for quantitative rainfall estimation (i.e., rain gauges, disdrometers, weather radars) make the precipitation monitoring a complex task. However, real-time rainfall maps are an important tool for many applications, dealing with environment, social activities, and business. Recently, the use of “opportunistic” methods to estimate rainfall has been investigated, highlighting the possibility to exploit inexpensive opportunities to augment information about precipitation. This article deals with smart low-noise blocks (SmartLNBs) converters, which are commercially available interactive digital video broadcasting (DVB) receivers designed to be used as bidirectional modems for commercial interactive TV applications. In the last few years, an algorithm that converts the SmartLNB raw data into attenuation values, from which the rainfall rate is obtained, has been developed and evaluated. The aim of this article is to describe the improvements of the rainfall estimation from SmartLNBs brought by significant changes in the data acquisition from SmartLNB and by algorithms’ update. One year of data collected in Rome and Tuscany (Italy) are analyzed to test the performance of SmartLNB in estimating rainfall accumulation with respect to co-located rain gauges and disdrometer in the new configuration. Comparing SmartLNB and disdrometer data in Rome, we obtained root mean square error (RMSE) equal to 7.3 mm, normalized mean absolute error (NMAE) equal to 51%, with a correlation coefficient of 0.67, that can point out the maturity of the technique.