High Resolution Rain Intensity Measurement and its Application on Free Space Optics

The effect of thunderstorms is part of our everyday life, both from scientific and economic points of view. Determining the rain intensity is extremely important among the various types of precipitation, and several traditional meteorological methods and other techniques can be applied to this. The fluctuation of the received signal level, occurring on radio connections, especially in the shorter millimeter wavelength range, strongly depends on the rain intensity. Thus, the fading phenomenon is also suitable for measuring the rain intensity indirectly. We present our new method of producing calibrated attenuation time series from the measured data of the received signal level, which can be used to directly express the rain intensity. It is concluded that the method is suitable for the detection of rapid and instantaneous changes in rain intensity due to the high sampling rate. Our results have many possible applications: from high-resolution detection of time-varying rainfall intensity to adaptive communication control systems with short reaction times. We present the effect of heavy rainfall on free-space optical connections, an important secure and high data rate link type. We assume that high-intensity rain would result in the disturbance of optical connections and worst-case it would result in its interruption. We analyzed the magnitude of deterioration by the probability of fade. Based on our results, we draw attention to the fact that nowadays increasingly frequent, high-intensity precipitation bursts can damage optical connections. We advise some solutions to eliminate the harmful effects of intense rain.