Rain Estimation from Smart City''s E-band Links

Smart cities around the world are supported by high-capacity wireless communication networks, which are based on millimeter-waves links. The propagating waves are sensitive to hydrometeors, and their signal level is attenuated by rain. However, most of the links in such networks are shorter than 1 km, imposing large errors on the rain estimation results. In this paper we demonstrate, using actual measurements from the city of Rehovot, Israel, how high-resolution rain maps can be generated from the received signal level measurements collected by these links. We first propose a method for reducing the errors in converting signal attenuation to rainfall estimates in short, incity links. The proposed method requires calibration of model parameters using side information from either a rain gauge or a long link in the vicinity of the network. We empirically analyze the results of the calibrating method using either auxiliary measurements and show that the performance is satisfactory for both.