Authors
AJ Cuddeback (University of Colorado Boulder; National Technology and Information Administration Institute for Telecommunication Sciences) and Scott Palo (University of Colorado Boulder)
Abstact
As a primary driving force of the water cycle, rainfall impacts virtually every terrestrial process and ecosystem. Precipitation measurements are central to numerous critical decisions informed by hydrological processes such as the forecast and tracking of severe weather, planning of agriculture to maximize crop viability, and design of urban infrastructure to minimize flood risks. Understanding and predicting high-impact precipitation events is necessary to protect human life and vulnerable ecosystems. Precipitation is a highly dynamic process in both space and time, and conventional precipitation measurement methods such as rain gauges and satellites struggle to accurately estimate precipitation fields on the ground. Commercial 5G mmWave deployments often have link distances of 0.5–1.5 km and are almost exclusively within a few tens of meters of ground level, precisely where there is the greatest scarcity of precipitation data. Attenuation due to rain at mmWave frequencies can be severe, providing an opportunity for integrated sensing and communications. Our work investigates the feasibility of utilizing 5G mmWave cellular signals to make high-resolution precipitation measurements. This poster describes a recent field campaign to Seattle, WA wherein we take measurements of signals from a commercial 5G mmWave deployment to investigate opportunistic rain sensing.