# Opportunistic Weather Sensing by Smart City Wireless Communication Networks
## 5 Summary and Conclusions  
High temporal-spatial resolution weather monitoring on the ground level is essential for many human applications. Within an urban environment, accurate rainfall monitoring is especially important both for smart city planning and for its operation.  
Such high-resolution monitoring can be achieved by a dense network of designated sensors. Such a solution, however, is unrealistic because of practical deployment and maintenance challenges. Moreover, because of the local climate created in cities, remote sensing techniques for weather monitoring are less effective in urban areas [69]. In this paper, we presented the paradigm of using opportunistic sensing of the weather using the wireless communication infrastructure that is present in modern smart cities' infrastructure. The idea is to use the already available hardware that produces standard attenuation measurements in SCWN as virtual weather monitoring devices. As such, they can be viewed as OISAC devices with no (or negligible) additional cost. The performance of the weather products depends on the availability of sensors and their spread. Naturally, the density of the virtual sensors is proportional to the density of the population in a given area. Here, smart cities provide a win-win situation, as the denser the population is, the higher the number of microwave and mmWave-connected devices are available. As a demonstration in the city of Rehovot in Israel, a rainfall map with a spatial resolution of an order of magnitude higher than the standard weather radar has been achieved.  
Lastly, we emphasize that OISAC is not only confined to rain monitoring. Indeed, monitoring different weather phenomena poses additional challenges, but past studies established the potential of using CMLs for not only near-ground rain mapping (e.g., [22; 70]), but also for many other weather phenomena [71]. Thus, we conclude with emphasizing that the concept of OISAC should be integrated into the design and management phases of modern smart cities, as it has the potential to benefit them greatly.  
Part of the ideas presented in this paper are described in the IEEE ISAC FOCUS newsletter (Issue 6, 2023) online at [[https://isac.committees.comsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/147/2023/05/ISAC-Focus_Issue6_0520.pdf](https://isac.committees.comsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/147/2023/05/ISAC-Focus_Issue6_0520.pdf)]([https://isac.committees.comsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/147/2023/05/ISAC-Focus_Issue6_0520.pdf](https://isac.committees.comsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/147/2023/05/ISAC-Focus_Issue6_0520.pdf)) (accessed on 25 September 2024). Conceptualization, J.O. and H.M.; methodology, J.O. and H.M. writing--draft, J.O.; writing--editing, J.O. writing--review, H.M.; visualization, J.O. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
Data are contained within the article and supplementary materials.  
We would like to thank our team members of the CellEnMon Lab ([[https://cellenmonlab.tau.ac.il/](https://cellenmonlab.tau.ac.il/)]([https://cellenmonlab.tau.ac.il/](https://cellenmonlab.tau.ac.il/)), accessed on 25 September 2024) at Tel Aviv University, and especially [PERSON] for providing us with images of Rehovot, and [PERSON], for providing us with the urban rainfall maps, based on the SCWN data collected by SMBIT Ltd. and provided to us by [PERSON]. We also thank our long-time partners at CELLCOM Ltd., PHI-Networks, Pelephone Ltd., and Ericsson AB, for providing us with CMLs and SMLs. Without their cooperation, our research could not have been completed. This article is related to the work of COST Action OpenSense [[https://opensenseaction.eu/](https://opensenseaction.eu/)]([https://opensenseaction.eu/](https://opensenseaction.eu/)), CA20136, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology, www.cost.eu). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.