Communication Infrastructure as an Opportunistic Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring

December 3, 2015, 3-4PM

Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Location: T105, Steinman Hall

Speaker: Dr. Noam David- Cornell University– College of Engineering

Advisor: Prof. H. Oliver Gao

The School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Accurate monitoring of atmospheric parameters at surface level are crucial for hazard warning, meteorological forecasting and for various applications in agriculture, hydrology, transportation and more. The accuracy of existing instruments, however, is often limited as a result of technical and practical constraints. Existing technologies such as satellite systems cover large areas but may experience lack of precision at near surface level. On the other hand, ground based in-situ sensors often suffer from low spatial representativity. In addition, these conventional monitoring instruments are costly to implement and maintain.

At frequencies of tens of GHz, various atmospheric hydrometeors affect microwave beams, causing attenuation to radio signals. Consequently, commercial Microwave Links (MWLs) that constitute the infrastructure for data transport between cellular base stations can be considered as a built in environmental monitoring facility (Messer et al., 2006). These MWLs are widely deployed at surface level altitudes and can potentially provide measurements of various atmospheric phenomena. The implementation costs are minimal since the infrastructure is already situated in the field. Commercial MWLs have been shown to be applicable for 2D rainfall mapping (e.g. Overeem et al., 2013) and potentially for water vapor monitoring (David et al., 2009; 2011) and dew detection (Harel et al., 2015). Moreover, it has been recently shown that the technology has strong potential for detection of fog and estimation of its intensity (David et al., 2013; David et al., 2015a; 2015b).

The research conducted to this point forms the basis for the initiation of a research project in this newly emerging field at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Cornell University.

The presentation will provide insights into key capabilities of the novel approach. The potential to monitor various atmospheric phenomena using current and future planned frequencies of commercial MWLs will be introduced.