Performance evaluation of synthetic storm technique over a tropical region for rain attenuation time series generation at Ka-band

Abstract

Rainfall can result in the poor performance of satellite communication links primar ily performing at frequencies larger than 10 GHz. Therefore, it is challenging to design Earth-satellite communication links in regions of heavy rainfall. Understanding the rain attenuation characteristics can help to improve the performance of satellite communica tion links. However, actual rain attenuation data may not be available, and hence an alternate way of obtaining rain attenuation characteristics is required. In the absence of actual data, estimated rain attenuation plays a vital role in analysing attenuation due to rain. ITU-R rain attenuation model is extensively used for statistical rain attenuation prediction. On the other hand, Synthetic storm technique (SST) is a conversion tech nique applied to obtain rain attenuation data using rain data. This work is focused on the effectiveness of the synthetic storm model for conversion of experimentally obtained data of rainfall rate into attenuation data due to rain. Matchings are observed between the measurements and estimation using the SST model. Keywords: Synthetic storm technique (SST), rainfall rate, time series, rain attenu ation