Rainfall Estimation Using Signals

Dear Colleagues,

Rainfall is a weather phenomenon that has intensified in recent decades due to climate change. Extreme rainfall is directly related to natural hazards because of flash flood events. Therefore, accurate rainfall measurement in space and time with real-time notification of authorities and competent services regarding extreme events is imperative. 

However, accurate rainfall measurement is challenging, especially for extreme precipitation events characterized by high spatial variability. Typical instruments for measuring in situ rainfall are rain gauges and disdrometers, with further information regarding drops. Typical remote rainfall measurements are acquired by weather satellites and radars. Rainfall measurements based on weather radars suffer from several errors coming either from natural or technical sources. Concerning weather satellite measurements, a significant limitation is the indirect character of the retrieval that correlates microphysical and dynamical cloud characteristics with rain amounts at ground level.

In the last ten years, there has been a significant boost mainly in estimating the precipitation through backhaul cellular microwave links and optical links, with the main advantage of the existing infrastructure and significant restrictions regarding limited access to rainfall data. Also, the 5G future operation in the mmWave area will give even more accurate rainfall data. The rainfall measurement is of great interest through 5G and next-generation smartphones. The main advantage is the possibility of a high rainfall data real-time grid network. The more serious disadvantage is the limited measurement accuracy, restricted by the smartphone’s hardware.

Collecting and processing rainfall data is accomplished from various sources: rain gauge and DSD sensors, microwave backhaul networks, FSO communication links, weather radars, and satellites, and a dense network of data from smartphone devices is the holy grail of real-time accurate rainfall measurement. Much has been done, but certainly, much more is needed.

This Special Issue aims to gather researchers from different scientific areas to highlight new and future trends in this interdisciplinary field. This particular issue highlights works that propose new or improved traditional or opportunistic sensing methods, in situ and remote rainfall devices, methodologies, and algorithms. Challenges to be covered include limited power resolution, baseline fluctuations, wet antenna errors, atmospheric turbulence, heterogeneity in data, rain type classifications, calibration, and validation errors.

Furthermore, smart technologies should further enhance green growth, sustainability, and knowledgeable platforms. These should include the proposed methods to foster the viability of green technologies and their derivatives even more. Consequently, additional works from this field are welcomed and should incorporate mainly or partially the proposed ideas.

Dr. Vasilis Christofilakis
Dr. Spyridon K. Chronopoulos
Dr. Konstantinos Peppas
Prof. Dr. Hector E. Nistazakis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Signals is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• signal strength
• smartphones
• rainfall algorithms
• measurements
• mmWave
• microwave
• attenuation
• FSO links
• weather radars
• satellites
• natural hazards
• hazards and sustainability
• green growth against natural disasters
• green buildings
• civil authorities
• rain-gauges
• disdrometers
• IoT