Rain induced effect on propagated signal was studied in this work. The weather parameters of two (2) locations representing two (2) climate zones in Northern Nigeria were employed, using the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-R P.618) rain attenuation model, to investigate the rain effect on strength of propagated signal ranging from Ku-band to V-band of the communication spectrum. The weather data were obtained from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) for a period of 10years (2009-2018) and assimilated into the model using 1-minute integration time rain rate. An elevation angle of 42.5°, which is the conventional elevation angle of systems to NIGCOMSAT-1R over the Atlantic Ocean region, was used. The results showed that annual rainfall amounts trends varied slightly with the different locations and climate zones, having 2018 and 2010 as the highest rain years within the studied years at Maiduguri and Sokoto respectively. Also, the difference between maximum and minimum 0.01% attenuation for the two locations are 2dB-3dB, 3dB-6dB for horizontal polarization and 1dB-1.5dB and 2dB-4dB for vertical polarization respectively at the two locations respectively. Rain attenuation can be managed well for propagated Ku-band signal with sophisticated sensors but above Ku-band, signal strength attenuation induced by rain could be really alarming.

We present nighttime variation of thermospheric winds estimated from the Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) which was recently deployed at Abuja in Nigeria. These results apply to the thermosphere region around 250 km and were obtained during the period of weak solar activity with solar flux values generally below 70 s.f.u. The results presented cover three months, from October 2017 to December 2017. The high geomagnetic activity level zonal winds generally lag the low geomagnetic activity level winds. Low geomagnetic activity level wind speeds are maintained between 80 and 100 m/s. High activity zonal wind speeds revealed minimum speed values between 0030 LT to about 0330 LT. We also present comparison between our observations and the latest version of the horizontal wind model (HWM14). The model predictions are generally in good agreement with our zonal wind observations. Our limited data used in the investigation is likely responsible for the significant discrepancies observed in the meridional winds.