Small Scale Rain Field Sensing and Tomographic Reconstruction with Passive Geostationary Satellite Receivers

Abstract

Sensing of the rain rate and the movement of the rain field over a relatively small geographical area may often be necessary for agricultural purposes, water management objectives or transport management in airports or harbors. In this paper, an entirely passive method is suggested to sense rainfall rate and extension of a rain field, with reconstruction in two dimensions using a tomographic method. In order to achieve this goal, multiple colocated satellite receivers are proposed to measure the beacon signal levels of geostationary satellites received at different azimuth angles. The tomographic reconstruction of the rain field takes the advantage of the dis-placement of the rain field due to the movement of air masses, while the rain intensity along the receiving path is estimated by the attenuation of the radio signal between the satellite and the ground receiver. To realize the proposed system, a complete receiver setup and an existing, operational group of satellites are selected. A widely known rain field modeling method is applied to generate test data and evaluate the system. The feasibility of a technically realizable system is provided, and its capabilities are compared with a hypothetical, ideal system. The methods and algorithms are tested on an existing geographical location, simulating a real operating environment.