An assessment of rain attenuation impact on satellite communication: Matching service quality and system design to the time of the day

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Matricciani, Emilio

Affiliations: Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32, 20133 Milano, Italy Tel.: +39 02 23993639; Fax: +39 02 23993413; E‐mail: matricci@elet.polimi.it

Abstract: The paper presents long term probability distributions of rain attenuation exceeded in 0.5‐h, 1‐h, 2‐h, 4‐h, contiguous periods of the day, at 11.6 GHz, circular polarisation, over a 32○ slant path from Spino d'Adda (Po Valley) in Northern Italy, compared to the usually considered long term results. The main findings are independent of frequency. These data can be useful in matching system design and service quality, which is affected very differently by rain attenuation to the time of the day. The results are applicable to communication satellites, and to TV and radio broadcasting. The data have been obtained by applying the synthetic storm technique to a large and statistical reliable set of 1233 rain rate time series collected in 10.6 years of continuous observation, thereby deriving 1233 rain attenuation time series.

Journal: Space Communications, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 195-205, 2000