Sources of error in microwave link rainfall estimation

Microwave links have been demonstrated to be higly suitable for the estimation of path-averaged rainfall intensity, both in a research setting (Ruf et al., 1996; Rincon and Lang, 2002; Holt et al., 2003; Rahimi et al., 2003, 2004; Minda and Nakamura, 2005; Kr¨amer et al., 2005; Upton et al., 2005; Grum et al., 2005; Leijnse et al., 2007a) and from commercial cellular communication networks (Messer et al., 2006; Leijnse et al., 2007b). However, some issues must be investigated more closely before these measurements, especially from commercial cellular communication networks, can be used operationally. To assess the quality of rainfall retrieved from networks of microwave links, it is necessary to quantify errors associated with single-link measurements. This paper deals with the estimation of some of these errors in microwave link measurements.