Loosing cellphone signals helps detect rainfalls
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If IP phones could find new applications, so why can’t cellphones? Everyone has experimented this kind of situation: Black clouds cripple quality of service of cellphones. Well, a group of Israeli researchers found that signal perturbations could in fact be turned into a very cheap way to spot rain area.
“You can extract useful information about rainfall from how much a signal is reduced,” explains Hagit Messer-Yaron, an electrical engineer from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, to NewScientist. It’s cost-efficient and also can cover zone where gauges are not installed.
The ‘ad-hoc’ system updates data every 15 minutes whereas traditional rain gauges are stuck in a 30-minutes updating cycle, and its accuracy ranges from 3 to 7 km. As far as we know, if picocells are going to be deployed, the system could even get a lot more precise.
Go hug phone masts, they may help save the planet.
May 12, 2006 | By Nuno
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