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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.

LoRa (Long Range) is a proprietary radio communication technology exploiting license-free frequency bands, allowing low-rate information exchange over long distances with very low power consumption. Conventional environmental monitoring sensors have the disadvantage of being in fixed positions and distributed over wide areas, thus providing measurements with a spatially insufficient level of detail. Since public transport vehicles travel continuously within cities, they are ideal to house portable monitoring systems for environmental pollution and meteorological parameters. The paper presents a feasibility analysis of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to collect this information from the vehicles conveying it to a central node for processing. The communication system is realized by deploying a layer-structured, fault-resistant, multi-hop Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) based on the LoRa technology. Both a theoretical study about electromagnetic propagation and network architecture are addressed with consideration of potential practical network realization.

− 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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