The fade slope of rain attenuation at Sparsholt, U.K. has been measured for a link with the ITALSAT F1 and F2 satellites at frequencies of 18.7, 39.6, and 49.5 GHz and compared with the corresponding ITU-R model. The model fits the data well visually with a tendency to be less accurate with increasing frequency due to the assumption of constant scaling of equiprobable attenuations being less accurate at higher frequencies. The probability distribution used in the model fails a chi-squared test for all confidence levels when compared with the data. Conditional statistics of fade slope on a diurnal and seasonal basis are also analyzed and reveal that the autumn season has higher fade slopes than any other, which can in part be attributed to the higher ratio of stratiform to convective rain in the autumn season. Fade slope was found to have slightly higher values during midday.

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SUMMARYSeveral short-term predictors of rain attenuation are implemented and tested using data recorded from a satellite link in Southern England, and a comparison is made in terms of the root-mean-square error and the cumulative distribution of under-predictions. A hybrid of an autoregressive moving average and adaptive linear element predictor is created that makes use of Gauss-Newton and gradient direction coefficient updates and exhibits the best prediction error performance of all prediction methods in the majority of cases.