The performance of millimetre wavelength wireless access network technologies are significantly impaired by rain effects. To evaluate the rain effects over a communication system, it is essential to know the temporal and spatial evolution of rainfall rate. For this reason it is necessary to develop an experimental network that provides sufficient data to study and establish means to prevent and compensate for the detrimental effects of rain. In this paper, an experimental rain gauge network is presented. This network comprises weather stations capable of measuring rainfall rate, temperature and humidity. The paper describes first the experimental network for automatic data acquisition as a system based in a distributed process. The design of the experimental network is explained in detail and finally the interest for millimetre wavelength applications is pointed out.

Rainfall rate is the main cause of fades in the frequency bands above 10 GHz. To optimize the planning of satellite and terrestrial radio communication systems operating on these frequency bands, it is essential to have a detailed knowledge of the temporal and spatial distributions of the rainfall rate. For this reason, it is necessary to develop experimental networks, which provide adequate data to study, prevent, and compensate the rain fade. In this paper, an experimental instrumentation network is presented. This network comprises weather stations that are capable of measuring rainfall rate, temperature, and humidity; a weather radar; and three radio links. This paper first introduces the rationale and the state of the art in meteorological sensors and describes the experimental network for automatic data acquisition as a distributed process system. The design of the experimental network is explained in detail. Finally, the interest in millimeter wavelength for broadband applications is outlined, and some research lines from the collected data are presented.