Ku‐band diurnal fade characteristics and fade event duration data from three, two‐year, Earth–space radiometric experiments in Equatorial Africa

Abstract

The move to provide direct to home (DTH) multi‐media services from satellites requires a number of new insights to be gleaned from the propagation effects that occur along satellite‐to‐ground paths. Annual statistics will not be sufficient to describe the likely performance of the link, nor will they provide information on the likely customer acceptance of the DTH service. What are required are the likely number of outages due to rain attenuation in a given period, their duration, the time between the outages, and the diurnal characteristics of rain attenuation along the link. This paper presents results obtained in three, two‐year, Ku‐band experiments in tropical Africa on diurnal attenuation effects, as well as on rain and attenuation event duration and inter‐event duration. The implications of the results are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Analysis of Fade Dynamic at Ku-Band in Malaysia

“…450 fades were more than 3 dB and 11 dB fades exceeded 100 s. Such durations are sufficient to cause significant interruption to the services provided to the end users. For example, the operators of satellite broadcasting services at temperate regions usually consider 7 dB of attenuation as a typical margin for direct-to-home Ku-band satellite broadcasting services [1,17]. But such a margin might not be considered appropriate for equatorial regions, where this threshold is exceeded more frequently compared to the temperate areas.…”

“…Consequently, Ku-band broadcasting services are affected by link outage especially during timecritical transmission such as real-time news and sport events. The probable duration of rain fade, the time of day when it is likely to occur, and how frequently it happens are all important aspects for the design of satellite services [1].…”

“…The knowledge of second order statistics for rain attenuation in a given environment is essential to help service providers to specify the type of modulation and error-correction schemes, the range of uplink power control, and the tracking speed of PIMTs that need to be used during severe rain periods to reduce the probability of link outages [4]. Up to the date, numbers of propagation measurement campaigns have been conducted at Ku-band temperate regions [6][7][8] while very limited investigations have been reported in heavy rain regions particularly focused on fade dynamics of rain attenuation statistics [1,[9][10][11]. This work investigates such crucial statistics in an equatorial site by exploiting one year of slant path attenuation measurements at this frequency band.…”

Rainfall Dynamics Over Two Indian Tropical Stations for Radio Communication

“…Such variations do affect the customer's acceptance or rejection of the offering due to the Quality of Service (QoS) provided especially for direct to home services (DTH) which its economics are closely connected to the cost of the user terminal [9]. In order to develop a better service, much more detail information is required of the propagation conditions to be encountered in the satellite to ground link, particularly at the seasonal and monthly level.…”

Characterization of Rain Specific Attenuation and Frequency Scaling Method for Satellite Communication in South Korea

“…In this concern, satellite communication plays a crucial role but the atmospheric propagation effects impair the availability and quality of satellite links during the service period [3]. The higher frequencies band has been preferable to provide direct to home (DTH) multimedia services [4]. Rain attenuation in satellite communication systems operating at Ka band frequencies is more severe than usually experienced at lower frequency bands [5].…”