I have gone through the website of TRMM that explains how the TRMM satellite gather precipitation data- http://pmm.nasa.gov/node/158. During the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM), we have synoptic systems that deliver rainfall during the months of June through September. These systems are spread over days and often provide continuous rainfall i.e. they are continuous atmospheric processes. How does the TRMM satellite, which I do not believe is a geostationary satellite, 'continuously' measure the rainfall over a wide region of space?
Now one way they could overcome that is they mention they have a dozen such satellites that measure the precipitation but do those dozen satellites coordinate their work as in a A-train satellite constellation? If they do not coordinate their work they probably return to the same location every few hours to make a measurement.
If that is true what sort of assumptions are made about what happens between these observations from a algorithms perspective to derive precipitation values?