Performance comparison of different types of broadcast satellite receivers for opportunistic rain estimation

Rainfall monitoring plays a key role in many disciplines dealing with environment, social activities, and business. Moreover, the temporal and spatial variability of precipitation and the need for a dense network of measuring devices, make the rainfall estimation a complex task from both scientific and economic point of view. In recent years, the use of “opportunistic” sensors has been investigated as an alternative to the conventional devices, aiming to expanding available measurements without adding new infrastructures, thus also containing costs and maintaining the necessary measurements accuracy. In the framework of exploiting opportunistic sensors, this paper has investigated the rainfall estimation performance of two different types of receivers for direct-to-home satellite TV, a highquality product, named IoT First, and a more conventional and cheaper LNB. The analysis shows better performance of the IoT First in terms of noise and rain estimate accuracy w.r.t. conventional weather sensors.