Quantitative precipitation estimation and rainfall monitoring based on meteorological data, potentially provides continuous, high-resolution and large-coverage data, are of high practical use: Think of hydrogeological risk management, hydroelectric power, road and tourism. Both conventional long-range radars and rain-gauges suffer from measurement errors and difficulties in precipitation estimation. For efficient monitoring operation of localized rain events of limited extension and of small basins of interest, an unrealistic extremely dense rain gauge network should be needed. Alternatively C-band or S-band meteorological long range radars are able to monitor rain fields over wide areas, however with not enough space and time resolution, and with high purchase and maintenance costs. Short-range X-band radars for rain monitoring can be a valid compromise solution between the two more common rain measurement and observation instruments. Lots of scientific efforts have already focused on radar-gauge adjustment and quantitative precipitation estimation in order to improve the radar measurement techniques. After some considerations about long range radars and gauge network, this paper presents instead some examples of how X-band mini radars can be very useful for the observation of rainfall events and how they can integrate and supplement long range radars and rain gauge networks. Three case studies are presented: A very localized and intense event, a rainfall event with high temporal and spatial variability and the employ of X-band mini radar in a mountainous region with narrow valleys. The adaptability of such radar devoted to monitor rain is demonstrated.

− RIFD technologies are applied in a various number of environmental monitoring applications. Efficient energy management is one of the most important prerequisites for the realization of such systems and the power consumption of the RFID tag during radio transmissions must be kept low. The proposed system is composed by the RFID tags distributed on the territory and a reader installed on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The idea is to use the UAV to collect data from the RFID sensors scattered throughout the area by simply approaching them, flying above them, and downloading measured data. This solution can be adopted to implement a grid of independent RFID sensors covering a large area, or to query sensors located in dangerous scenarios for humans. RFID tags are equipped with measuring sensors and store locally the measured parameters; the reader is mounted on the UAV and through an appropriate communication protocols it identifies the tags, downloads the data and sends them to the Ground Control Station (GCS). At the GCS a technician can control the reader through a GUI console: it is possible to start the discovery, download the sensor data (manually or automatically) and clear the RFID tags memory. An ad-hoc mechanisms has also been implemented to join fast tag discovery procedure, fast data downloading and energy saving. The present paper describes the system, presents the testing methodology and analyses some achieved performances in a test scenario.

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In recent years Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted an increasing attention because of the large number of potential applications. They are used for collecting, storing and sharing data, for monitoring application, surveillance purposes and much more. Taking into account such multipurpose applications, a new experimental electronic board has been designed to be used specifically as a multipurpose WSN node. The board has been completely designed as an open system in order to be configured by only varying the firmware on the microcontroller to be connected with different types of sensors, such as, for example, solid state tri-axial accelerometer, analog temperature sensors, GNSS receivers, etc… The board allow different interfaces and is equipped with a recovery system via a watchdog chip which continuously monitor the onboard microcontroller. A free open source operative system has been ported on the microcontroller in order to give greater flexibility to the node, and to perform multi tasking operations. Low power consumptions together with its compact size, and its multiple functionalities made the board perfectly suited as a multipurpose WSN node. The boards have been already employed in two installed WSN: a GPS monitoring network and an WSN designed as anti-theft alarm system for photovoltaic panels.