volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Rain cell size is an input requirement for rain-induced attenuation studies. It is useful in estimating the extent of a given radio link path that will traverse the rain medium in a given rain event. The ``Synthetic Storm'' approach, which requires 1-minute integration time data, is used to derive the proposed rain cell sizes for various climatic zones within South Africa. The conversion of the readily available 1-hour integration time rain rate data to the desired 1-minute rain rate is carried out first for some locations and then validated by the existing measurement data and proposed global conversion factors. By the use of rain-induced attenuation prediction equation for terrestrial links that requires rain cell size as input, contour plots of specific attenuation for two high bandwidth frequencies used in terrestrial link implementations is presented. Site diversity separation distance map is proposed as well from the link budget analysis for each location to achieve an all time link availability of 99.99% of time.

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Mr. Peter O. Akuon

Prof. Thomas Joachim Odhiambo Afullo