Rain Rate Statistics and Fade Distribution of Millimeter Waves in Indian Continents

Abstract

For any communication service operating in the Microwave/ Millimeter wave region, statistical information characterising the attenuation due to rain along satellite slant path would be required for the design of satellite communication links and for the broadcasting network above 20 Ghz. It is necessary to have a prior knowledge of the probability of exceeding different levels of rain attenuation in order to design appropriate fade margins into systems and establishing estimates of the year to year variability of rain fade margin for particular geographic regions of India so that the communication system reflects the extremes of these variabilities. Direct measurement of beacon signals from geostationary satellites have been a mean to determine the above information and experiments can be pursued with satellite such as INSAT. [1]

Attenuatiuon of Millimeter Waves by rainfall restricts the path length of a communication system. A knowledge of the rain attenuation at such frequencies is therefore desirable in designing a reliable communication system. Signal level fading over line-of-sight links strongly depends on the hop length, frequency and climate. For short hops, the probability of occurance of deep fades becomes diminishingly small. However, since an extended hop length is possible for regions with little rain activity, clear weather fading can affect the link reliability in a similar way ti a rain.[2]