The Potential of Microwave Communication Networks to Detect Dew: Experimental Study

At microwave frequencies of tens of GHz, various hydrometeors cause attenuations to the electromagnetic signals. Here, we focus on the effect of liquid water films accumulating on the outer coverage of the microwave units during times of high relative humidity (RH). We propose a novel technique to detect moist antenna losses using standard received signal level (RSL) measurements acquired simultaneously by multiple commercial microwave links (MLs). We use the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) for detecting a transient signal of unknown arrival time and duration. The detection procedure is applied on real RSL measurements taken from an already existing microwave network. It is shown that moist antenna episodes can be detected, information which provides the potential to identify dew, an important hydro-ecological parameter.