Visibility Parameter in Sand/Dust Storms’ Radio Wave Attenuation Equations: An Approach for Reliable Visibility Estimation Based on Existing Empirical Equations to Minimize Potential Biases in Calculations

• Main Authors: Hamzah N. Mahmood, Widad Ismail
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-10-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: sand/dust storm (SDS); signal attenuation; visibility; total suspended particles (TSP)
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/21/7530

In efforts to structure an expression for wave attenuation under a sand/dust storm, most established calculations pronounce optical visibility as an essential parameter. Although visibility information can be retrieved from weather stations, other commonly encountered sources may present it differently, i.e., as total suspended particles (TSP). Consequently, several empirical equations linking visibility to TSP concentrations were evaluated to address offset tendencies in estimations. In addition to substantiating specific equations, the results revealed that averaging a pair of equations has a 46.09% chance of estimating visibilities with a probability of 37.27%, a relatively low error compared to that achieved by employing single equations, which were found to have a probability of 28.93% with a lesser chance (29.58%) of a low estimation error for the same set of data. The resulting enhancement was evaluated by considering a study on a wireless sensor network’s (WSN’s) signal performance under vaguely labelled meteorological conditions. The meteorological conditions were converted to visibility using the results’ suggestions and were found to be in good agreement with an observation standard set by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) for sand/dust storm outbreak classifications.