Patent ID: 8275548

Claim:
A method for detecting lightning activity, the method comprising: receiving, at a waveform sensor, waveform data indicative of the lightning activity from one or more signal converters, the waveform data comprising a group of electromagnetic waveforms; filtering, at a processor disposed within the waveform sensor, the waveform data to remove noise frequencies, the filtering comprising: transmitting one or more uncompressed portions of the waveform data to a server computing device; receiving digital filter data from the server computing device, the digital filter data based on the one or more uncompressed portions of waveform data; removing, by the processor, one or more frequencies from the waveform data based on the digital filter data; compressing, at the processor, the waveform data, the compressing comprising: (i) selecting one or more points on a waveform, the one or more points being above a predetermined threshold; and (ii) determining an inflection of the selected points based on a predefined algorithm; transmitting, by the waveform sensor, the compressed waveform data to a processing server for analysis to detect lightning activity.