Research Article Open Access

Rain Events Detection using Energy Variation of Commercial Microwave Links Attenuation

Wend Yam Serge Boris Ouedraogo1, Moumouni Djibo1, Ali Doumounia2, Serge Roland Sanou3, Moumouni Sawadogo1, Idrissa Guira4 and François Zougmoré1
  • 1 Department of Physic, Laboratoire de Matériaux et Environnement (LA.ME), Université Joseph KI-ZERBO (UJKZ), Ouagadougou, 03 BP 7021 Ouagadougou 03, Burkina Faso
  • 2 Ecole Normale Supérieure, Koudougou, Burkina Faso
  • 3 Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électronique des Postes (ARCEP), 01 BP 6437 Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso
  • 4 Telecel Faso SA, 08 BP 11059 Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Abstract

In this study, we propose a new method for detecting wet periods by using telecommunications Commercial Microwave Links (CML). The purpose of the study is to automatically find rain time slots. The attenuation of the microwave signal, propagating between a transmitting antenna and a receiving one, due to the variations of the climatic conditions over the link, is a non-stationary signal. When a rain event occurs over a CML, the attenuation signal level increases proportionally to the rain amount. This level decreases again at the end of the rain. These abrupt variations are exploited here to detect rainy time slots. The proposed method consists in splitting the attenuation signal into frames and computing the variation of the energy between consecutive frames. To determine whether the current frame corresponds to a wet period, the proposed method, named Energy Variation (EVA), compares the variation of the energy with a given threshold, while taking into account the status of the previous frame. Simulation results from real attenuation data of the mobile phone operator Telecel Faso SA (Burkina Faso) show that the proposed method allows the detection of 84.61% of rainy events. The Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) is higher than 0.9, which demonstrates that EVA can discriminate between wet and dry periods with high accuracy.

American Journal of Applied Sciences
Volume 19 No. 1, 2022, 78-83

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2022.78.83

Submitted On: 12 March 2022 Published On: 20 August 2022

How to Cite: Ouedraogo, W. Y. S. B., Djibo, M., Doumounia, A., Sanou, S. R., Sawadogo, M., Guira, I. & Zougmoré, F. (2022). Rain Events Detection using Energy Variation of Commercial Microwave Links Attenuation. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 19(1), 78-83. https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2022.78.83

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Keywords

  • Commercial Microwave Link
  • Wet-Dry Classification
  • Energy
  • Attenuation
  • Rainfall