Preliminary investigation of small scale spatial variability of rainfall using a rain gauge network for 5G links

Abstract

The performance of the 5G system in the heavy region is closely related to the distance between the base station of the network as the mm-Wave frequency employed suffers from deep signal fade due to rain. For this reason, the knowledge of spatial variability of small scale rain profiles is of key importance. This work investigates such spatial features of the rain profile based on 16 months of measured rain gauge networks data in UTM, Johor, Malaysia. The spatial pattern and trend were carefully processed and analyzed according to the rain events extracted from 4 rain gauges within the UTM campus. The investigation work only focuses on the high rain rate profile with a threshold of above 50 mm/h. The preliminary results indicate the Gaussian profile seems to represent the small scale rain cell; however, the validity of the results should be further investigated with respect to the complete rain cell profile in this particular region. Nevertheless, this preliminary work gave radio engineers at least an early insight into the spatial variability of rain and their impact on the design of the 5G system in heavy rain regions.