Hydrological estimates from radiowave propagation in terrestial microwave network

The evaluation of the liquid water and water vapor fluxes near the land-atmosphere interphase is of major importance for water management in respect to lowered vulnerability of society to weather-related risks. The project investigates methods and models allowing the use of microwave propagation data on cellular microwave links (CMLs) as novel sensor for high-resolution monitoring of fluxes associated with precipitation and water vapour flux in both space and time to improve hydrological predictions e.g. storm water runoff. In particular, the project utilizes original field experiments with CMLs of different characteristics and deterministic modelling of microwave propagation in both urban and natural catchments i) to improve models for water fluxes quantification from CMLs including their uncertainties, ii) to developed effective calibration methods of multiple CMLs for operational quantification of hydrological variables.

The goal of the project is to develop methods for quantification of water fluxes on the land-atmosphere interface boundary using data on microwave propagation in atmospheric boundary layer of cellular microwave links employed as path-integrated hydrological sensors.

Pastorek, J.; Fencl, M.; Rieckermann, J. and Bareš, V. (2019). Commercial microwave links for urban drainage modelling: The effect of link characteristics and their position on runoff simulations. Journal of Environmental Management. 2019, 251, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109522 

Valtr, P.; Fencl, M.and Bareš, V. (2019). Excess Attenuation Caused by Antenna Wetting of Terrestrial Microwave Links at 32 GHz. IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters. 2019, 18(8), 1636-1640. https://doi.org/10.1109/LAWP.2019.2925455 

Fencl, M., Valtr, P., Kvicera, M.., and Bareš, V. (2019) Quantifying Wet Antenna Attenuation in 38-GHz Commercial Microwave Links of Cellular Backhaul. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (16), pp 514-518, https://doi.org/10.1109/LGRS.2018.2876696 

Mikešová, V., Fencl, M., Dohnal, M., Bareš, V. (2018) Use of autonomous transmission line-type electromagnetic sensors for classification of dry and wet periods at sub-hourly time intervals. Environ Monit Assess 190: 684. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-018-7059-7 

Stránský, D., Fencl, M. and Bareš, V. (2018) Runoff prediction using rainfall data from microwave links: Tabor case study. Water Science and Technology 2017 (2), pp 351-359, https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2018.149.