Stand-Alone, Affordable IoT Satellite Terminals and Their Opportunistic Use for Rain Monitoring

Internet of Things (IoT) communication via satellite is an important emerging technology, which is essential for a variety of applications such as agriculture, financial technology, and homeland security in rural or isolated areas. In this article, we deal with two-way low cost, stand-alone IoT satellite terminals communicating over geostationary satellites at Ku-band frequencies, already deployed in isolated areas in Africa and South America. On top of their designated use for specific IoT applications, we suggest using such terminals for opportunistic rain monitoring, based on the two-way link quality measurements that are being regularly collected for network management purposes. The local E_{s}/N_{0} measurements are transmitted to the cloud, where their transformation to rain-intensity estimates is carried out. We present preliminary results using real measurements, showing good agreement with direct rainfall measurements recorded by a rain gauge. Enabling this feature in two-way communication of IoT satellite terminals is beneficial, as it will provide the ability to monitor the rain in areas where designated weather monitoring equipment is sparse, helping to improve local weather-based applications in such areas, and to better track the climate change globally. © 2018 IEEE.