A Cost-Effective Embedded Weather Monitoring System for Airport Air Traffic Control Applications

The weather has become an important factor for safe and effective airport ATC. Precise and minute-byminute measurement of local meteorological parameters is a necessity, especially at the time of aircraft take-off and landing. In this paper, an inexpensive embedded weather monitoring system is proposed for air- port air traffic control applications. The developed system relies on an Arduino Uno microcontroller, which encompasses several environmental sensors to record the main parameters, such as temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind speed. The system makes use of a DHT22 sensor to measure temperature and humidity, a rain sensor module that is used for detecting precipitation in the environment, and a custom-made infrared anemometer for estimating wind speed with pulse counting using interrupts. All the collected information is processed in real-time and shown on an I2C-driven LCD module, allowing on-spot situational awareness. It is hardware architecture aims at reducing cost, modularity, and easy deployment. Experimental tests in a real environment have proved the stabilization of the system and successfully collected data. The findings support the fact that our solution offers valid real-time weather information, which can be used as ancillary decision support in airport environments. Not intended to substitute certified meteorology stations, the service can still provide a useful and cost effective alternative for small or regional airports, as well as educational and pilot club applications. Upcoming improvements are related to wireless communication, sensor calibration, and connection to established air traffic control systems.