The paper describes the modeling of the average raindrop size distribution measured at Ile‐Ife, a tropical station in South Western Nigeria. The new “method of moment regression” employed is a systematic one that has allowed a single lognormal function to be accurately fitted over the entire range of rain rates measured, a convenient result for rain attenuation and scattering applications. The Marshall and Palmer law, frequently used for such calculations, has been shown to be inadequate as a model for this tropical station, especially at the high rain rates important for communications systems design. This result suggests that the similar Laws and Parsons dropsize distribution currently adopted by the International Radio Consultative Committee for estimating rain attenuation from 1 to 1000 GHz may not be adequate over such a large frequency range in such tropical locations. Some comparisons are also made with the lognormal models and modeling approaches of other workers. The results confirm the utility of the rain rate parameterization used in the model for Ile‐Ife, while giving further support to the accuracy of the lognormal distribution.

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Some characteristics of tropical rain rate and raindrop size distribution are briefly reported, making use of the data obtained at locations in Nigeria. Models and empirical relations have been obtained for the computation of the effects of tropical rain on radiowave propagation at centimetre and millimetre waves. Results are presented for the effect of integration time on rain rate as well as the rain‐rate duration characteristics, rain‐induced phase shift, attenuation and depolarization, in addition to the relationship between the rain rate and other rainfall parameters. Comparisons have also been made in many cases with the CCIR reports and results from other locations.

Evaluation of bistatic transmission loss cumulative distribution is very useful in assessing the effect of interference due to hydrometeor scatter between the communication links operating at the same frequency. Out of the many factors that could be responsible for the intersystem interference between the microwave communication systems, this paper presents the result of computation of intersystem interference resulting from the hydrometeor scatter on tropical paths. Interference is computed in terms of the cumulative distribution of transmission loss. The effect of varying common volume formed by the intersection of the antenna beams on the transmission loss is investigated. Results show that at frequencies higher than 10 GHz, for antenna separation longer than 100 km, common volume will be in the ice region, leading to a higher interference level at the interfered terminal. Also, results obtained show that because total path attenuation at 30 GHz is lower than at 20 GHz (this is due to the decrease in water vapour attenuation in the 22·2–30 GHz window), transmission loss tends to be higher at 20 GHz than at 30 GHz. In addition, increasing the antenna gain of the interfering station will result in the increasing interference level at the interfered station. Evaluation of the effective transmission loss shows that this parameter gives a better assessment of interference on the tropical propagation paths noted for high‐intensity convective precipitation. In this case, the effective transmission loss has been evaluated in terms of the joint occurrence of additional rain attenuation on the wanted path, and the cumulative distribution of transmission loss on the intersecting paths. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract. In this paper, the effects of tropical rainfall on the propagation of microwave and millimeter-wave signals on terrestrial paths have been investigated. Quantitative evaluation of spheroidal raindrop scattering parameters such as the scattering amplitude functions, total and scattering cross sections, and so on, were carried out for linear polarization (horizontal and vertical), using the least squares fitting method over the frequency range 1-100 GHz. Incident radio signals are assumed plane and arrive normally on the raindrop axis. For the purpose of application to slant paths, two other incident angles, 500 and 700 , were considered. The computed forward scattering amplitude functions were employed to compute the complex effective propagation constant of the radio signals in four tropical rainfall types: drizzle, widespread, shower, and thunderstorm. The corresponding specific attenuation and specific phase shift were computed. Specific attenuation and phase shift due to the rain types for circularly polarized radio signals were also derived. The parameters of the power law relationship between attenuation, phase shift, and rain rate were computed for each rain type and compared with existing temperate and tropical models. The problem of rain-induced alepolarization was also investigated by COlnputing the cross polarization discrimination for the four rainfall types over the frequency range 1-50 GHz, which is of immediate importance to system designers.