Development of an Environment and Climate Data Acquisition System (EC-DAQS) for Radio Propagation Studies

Most weather monitoring systems used for measuring meteorological parameters are imported. For many developing countries like Nigeria, importing measuring instruments is practically bedeviled with problems due to erratic exchange rates. This has hampered weather-related research especially in radio propagation studies where finite weather data are required. In the quest to develop a home-grown monitoring system, this paper presents an Environment and Climate data acquisition system (EC-DAQS). In the EC-DAQS, an Arduino Mega2560 microcontroller along with six environment and weather sensors were coded to measure, record and display atmospheric parameters. For digital signal processing and data logging, the sensors were interconnected to the microcontroller through an analogue-to-digital-converter (ADC). The measured data were displayed on a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen remotely connected to the controller. Temperature, Ultraviolet Violet (UV) rays, humidity and sound level were tested and calibrated with “off-the shelf” instruments. The mean bias error (MBE) and the root mean square error (RMSE) were used to validate the temperature readings from the EC-DAQS with readings from a standard infra-red thermometer. The low results of the MBE (0.16°C) and RMSE (0.51°C) – showed close proximity between the EC-DAQS and the standard infra-red digital thermometer measurements. Also, the equation obtained from modelling is a straight line of near unity slope (0.994) and a correlation of 99.98%. The EC-DAQS developed will be a useful meteorological instrument, and a suitable replacement for imported weather stations in terms of performance, cost and maintenance. It will also provide some invaluable data needed for radio-propagation research and applications.