Rain Drops Signal Cell Phones 86
An anonymous reader writes "Signals from mobile phone masts have been used to measure rainfall patterns in Israel, scientists report. From the BBC article: 'The University of Tel-Aviv analyzed information routinely collected by mobile networks and say their technique is more accurate than current methods used by meteorological services. The data is a by-product of mobile network operators' need to monitor signal strength. If bad weather causes a signal to drop, an automatic system analyzing the data boosts the signal to make sure that people can still use their mobile phones. The amount of reduction in signal strength gave the researchers an indication of how much rain had fallen.'"
what was that? (Score:5, Funny)
doesn't poor weather increase signal strength? (Score:1)
I live in the shadow of a mountain, and all I know is that on sunny cloudless day, my cell reception sucks; I'd swear its better when it rains. When its dry but overcast I get the strongest signals.
any /. physicists and cell pundits are welcome to explain... thanks
Re:doesn't poor weather increase signal strength? (Score:3, Informative)
The only explanation that I can think of for increased signal strength would be the tower antenna's or radio's temperature due to a poor quality in
Lots of possibilities (Score:2)
Visible light is not the only part of the EM spectrum that can be distorted by atmospheric conditions. Think mirage. Think radar. 1.8 GHz phones are definitely in the microwave class. Lensing with different layers of air with temperature and humidity variations might be your culprit. Think mirage where you are looking at the ground and see the sky or with your situation, your cellphone is "looking" over the mountai
Headline? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does "Rain Drops Signal Cell Phones" actually mean? Are individual raindrops sending signals to cell phones? Did they actually mean that rain drops (degrades) cell phone signals? No, apparently they meant that cell phone signals can detect rain drops... and unless my ability to parse english is somewhat broken, the headline simply doesn't say that.
I wouldn't mention this if it didn't happen at least once a week. I'm forced to spend a good ten seconds in a state of frustrated confusion as my brain struggles to comprehend absolute gibberish.
Re:Headline? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Headline? (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. West... (Score:1)
Box.
Toaster.
Aluminum.
Maple syrup. No I take that one back... I'm gonna hold on to that one.
Thank you Mayor West...
Re:Headline? (Score:1)
I guess we should all just be glad that... (Score:2)
"Cohesive adamant sanction"
and the body of the article wasn't a viagra/cialis spam.
Re:Headline? (Score:1)
Re:Headline? (Score:2)
"Gum Drops Signal Cell Phones"
"Eye Drops Signal Cell Phones"
"Cough Drops Signal Cell Phones"
Er, wait . . .
Re:Headline? (Score:2)
Re:Headline? (Score:1)
Re:Headline? (Score:1)
That's they're, not their. Perhaps you should follow your own advice?
Re:Headline? (Score:5, Funny)
You need to read between the words... (Score:3, Funny)
"I'm zonked, it's late, and I'm going to copy and paste
Re:Headline? (Score:2)
Re:Headline? (Score:2)
Re:turbo button for cell phone reception (Score:5, Informative)
If you find you're getting a drop in signal due to rain fade, you can bump it up a bit. Most stuff uses ATPC (automatic transmit power control) so does it by itself, but you can get graphs off it with SNMP.
Re:turbo button for cell phone reception (Score:2)
Probably to avoid interference with other nearby phone cells using the same frequency.
This is pure guesswork on my behalf, but here goes:
I would imagine that the cell network is laid out so nearby cells use different frequencies with
Re:turbo button for cell phone reception (Score:3, Informative)
Re:turbo button for cell phone reception (Score:1)
It's not a very good joke, though, is it...
Re:turbo button for cell phone reception (Score:2)
I can only guess that for towers the power alters based on an average of the signal strength to all its handsets, so it is also possibly to save power on the handsets. As for interference, there's no point keeping each tower up
Re:turbo button for cell phone reception (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and the turbo button actually slowed down the processor down to the speed of a 4.7 MHz 8086. When in turbo mode the computer would run at nominal speed.
The weatherman? (Score:5, Funny)
- RG>
Re:The weatherman? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The weatherman? (Score:2)
Re:The weatherman? (Score:1)
Re:The weatherman? (Score:1)
Can't grok headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it's just me (I'm up at 5:30am to catch a flight) but I'm having trouble parsing the headline. Sounds like the rain is signaling cell phones.
Kind of interesting, but (having not read TFA, mind you) I wonder how small amounts of rain affect the signal. One would thing the signal would only be affected by heavy rain, and so the resolution of the resulting data would suffer.
Re:Can't grok headline (Score:1)
Re:Can't grok headline (Score:1)
No, it is not just you... I thought it was just me too, but that's because english isn't my first language. Actually, it's my third language. Almost fourth.
Re:Can't grok headline (Score:1)
Or perhaps "Rain Drops Cell Signal" would be better...
Re:Can't grok headline (Score:1)
Spans the globe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh really, these people need to get a clue, down here in Australia the mobile networks cover absoultely crap all of the continent and my moneys on Africa, South America, Asia (The real asia which is freaking huge) and Sibera are pretty much in the same boat.
And don't get me started on the 2/3rd of the planet is covered in water bit.
Re:Spans the globe? (Score:1)
water (Score:2)
So you're telling me... (Score:1)
Okay, so the cell phone providors can boost their signal strength whenever they want? Then why don't they just do that all the bloody time? I'm sick and tired of my mobile Internet connection randomly disconn(S&*(*S&(DH*&(SD*HS&D*H
Re:So you're telling me... (Score:2)
Re:So you're telling me... (Score:2)
Re:So you're telling me... (Score:3, Funny)
Can you Hear me now (Score:2, Funny)
Detect rain... and anything else that blocks signa (Score:1)
What about fog? What about different sized rain droplets and velocities and differing amounts of signal boost necessary for the same volume of water? Can the cell tower differentiate between signal loss due to rain as compared to objects near the phone, like a car body or metal object?
Re:Detect rain... and anything else that blocks si (Score:4, Interesting)
In particular, a US F-117 Stealth fighter was shot down over Bosnia. The shooters could not track the plane on radar -because it's stealth, you know- so they looked instead at the changing signal patterns of the cell system as the plane flew over.
They didn't look for the plane so much as the "signal hole" it made as it moved through the sky. They simply aimed some missles at the "hole" and scored a hit. It was the first F117 downed by enemy fire.
Very creative. Everydamnbody in the world who's likely to be F117 targets took lots and lots of notes.
Re:Detect rain... and anything else that blocks si (Score:3, Interesting)
Not entirely true. From Wikipedia:
Sounds good...but how? (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA: The scientists believe the technique can also measure snowfall, hail or fog [...] The data is a by-product of mobile network operators' need to monitor signal strength [...] If bad weather causes a signal to drop, an automatic system analysing the data boosts the signal to make sure that people can still use their mobile phones.
I follow the logic- except for one catch: how can researchers tell if the signal strength is reduced by rain OR snow OR hail (etc)?
In other words, bad weather = signa
Re:Sounds good...but how? (Score:1)
j/k
Re:Sounds good...but how? (Score:2)
More accurate? (Score:1, Interesting)
A dense fog and a light rain have the same effect on signal strength. Maybe they don't get fog.
I had the opportunity to visit the control center for one of the national cell phone providers. It was a large room with large screens covering one wall. Some of the screens were weather maps. They used the weather predict where there would be degredation in the service.
Feature Creep. (Score:5, Funny)
Then came the ringtones and other customization features, and those were fun to toy with.
Then there was web-browsing, which was even cooler, and actually served to make the phone more useful.
Then came the cameras for still-image and video capture - why for nobody knows, but people love it anyway.
Given all of that neat stuff, and the increasingly computer-like nature of cellular phones, what's the next feature on the horizon, you ask?
Portable weather stations. It just makes sense.
Re:Feature Creep. (Score:2)
Ooops.
Only in America.
Re:Feature Creep. (Score:2)
Re:Feature Creep. (Score:2)
I'm not sure how useful it'd be, but more data can't hurt.
P.S. TFA isn't about cell phone handsets, it's about the cell towers & other bits of wireless infrastructure.
Re:Feature Creep. (Score:2)
If you think about it, though, it shouldn't be especially difficult to cram a tiny barometer, thermometer, and humidity gauge into a handset. Creating a dongle for a phone that has all that and more would be a similarly painless process, and it could allow meteorologists and plain ol' hobbyists alike to carry around a tiny weather station wherever they go. This would be really
Really? (Score:2)
What do you mean? I'm typing this on my Nokia phone in the rain and it's doing fin#$@^%@#%#@@!#NO CARRIER
Maybe we should replicate these results... (Score:2)
Nuff said. (Score:2)
Did you know (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Did you know (Score:1)
10x (Score:1)
Old Story -- Prior Art (Score:1, Informative)
Details of TFA--it uses the backhaul link (Score:5, Informative)
The wireless backhaul links are much better for the meterological application than the handset link, because:
(a) It's a fixed link; since the cell towers don't move, like the handsets do, the location of the link, and therefore the rain, is known, and
(b) It's at a much higher frequency. The DFRS links used in this paper are at 8-23 GHz, much higher than the 0.8-1.9 GHz (depending on your local regulatory environment) of the handset link. This is important because rain attenuation increases [telesat.ca] as the signal frequency increases; it would be quite difficult to reliably detect rain fades at the handset frequencies (although in a bad enough storm--a cyclone comes to mind--it's probably possible; TFA notes the anecdotal evidence of fading television signals in bad weather).
I note in passing that the web-based supplimental material to the article references a US patent application, # 60/698,491.
*sigh* (Score:2)
Sorry, rented fingers.
Geez.
Re:Details of TFA--it uses the backhaul link (Score:2)
How did they substantiate the claim (Score:3, Interesting)
No claims about accuracy as you see. Whoever have access to full text please provide some clue (by Monday when I will have the access, the topic will be gone, so please post now).
Re:How did they substantiate the claim (Score:2)
The skill of our method (correlation with rain gauges) is 0.86 for a 15-min-interval rain intensity and 0.9 for an hourly interval, versus 0.81 and 0.85, respectively, for radar, when evaluated from the maximal value over a 3 x 7 km2 area.
Re:How did they substantiate the claim (Score:1)
Weird title. (Score:4, Funny)
Rain drops drop cell phone signal.
Rain drops cell phone signal.
Rain signalled by cell phone signal drops.
Cell phone signal drops signals rain.
Cell phones signal rain drops.
Drop in cell phone signal signals rain.
and quite a few more.
Re:Weird title. (Score:1)
with Apologies to Burt Bachrach and Hal David (Score:2)
But that doesn't mean I'll pay their charges just to roam
Roaming's not for me
'Cause I can't talk on my phone from an airplane
The FCC
Keeps on hassling me
And rain drops keep signaling my phone.
Not new, not even old, it's ANCIENT NEWS (Score:4, Informative)
So much so, that when they rolled out microwave telephone relay towers, circa 1950, they intentionally boosted the transmitted signal by some 20db (that's 100 times) more than necessary on a dry day, just to allow the signals to still get through during damp or fog or rain.
So this isnt even old news, it's going on 68 years!
Re:Not new, not even old, it's ANCIENT NEWS (Score:2)
The shape of raindrops (Score:2, Informative)
Many people think that raindrops have the typical shape of a tear, others think by looking at the rain itself that the drops are vertical lines of water. The first impression comes from pictures and literature, the second is caused by the fact that the raindrops fall at high speed, thus appear vertically blurred.
In fact, the tears start up being roughly spherical and end up becoming flat because of the air resistance.
http:// [suite101.com]
How do they know? (Score:1)
I mean besides setting up their own measuring stations and... Oh never mind.