A win-win situation for telecom operators and hydrologists: A proof of concept of providing probabilistic attenuation nowcasting for the telecommunication networks

A novel proposal to create probabilistic attenuation nowcasting as a by-product from ensembles of rainfall forecasts is presented in this study. These attenuation nowcasts may eventually be used by mobile network operators to dynamically adjust their wireless network operations in advance and during heavy and extreme rainfall events. It may also facilitate mobile network operators to see a direct benefit of widely sharing its received power level data of their backhaul towers for 'opportunistic' rainfall estimation in real-time in urban areas becoming a clear win-win situation for telecom operators and hydrologists. It is proposed here that probabilistic attenuation forecasts can be derived from the ensembles of high-resolution forecast rainfall fields with lead times of 15 to 90 minutes generated from weather radar using the Short-Term Ensemble Prediction System (STEPS). The ensembles of rainfall predictions can be easily converted to attenuation for specific operating frequencies. This study used 109 microwave links ranging from 15 to 40 GHz to verify the results of this probabilistic attenuation forecast. Results suggest that the STEPS-based attenuation forecast was within the narrow span of the 90 percent confidence region for all microwave links tested, with up to 30-minute lead time, and was found to be skilful for lead times of up to 30-45 minutes.