Implementation of Sensor Data Fusion in Radiosonde based on WMO Standard Data Format

Abstract

Upper-air observation is an essential meteorological observation done by different weather agencies around the world for forecasting thunderstorms and tornadoes. For this reason, it requires a very accurate instrument to measure the parameters in the upper-air. Radiosonde is an instrument used for upper-air observation and this study developed a radiosonde that is capable of measuring temperature, humidity, and pressure. The radiosonde of the previous study has a lower temperature measurement accuracy; thus, this study implemented a sensor data fusion to improve it. Also, the proposed radiosonde is compliant with the WMO standard data format which is the Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR). This allows different weather agencies to utilize this radiosonde. Laboratory testing was conducted to determine the accuracy of the proposed radiosonde sensors. The test revealed 97.5230%, 99.8657% and 99.9949% accuracy for temperature, humidity, and pressure measurements respectively. These accuracies are much higher than the previous study. The BUFR data output of the proposed sensor was successfully encoded and decoded by integrating the ECMWF API to the proposed radiosonde system. This study was able to develop a low cost version of radiosonde.