Slant path rain attenuation profile obtained from radar data

Abstract

Many telecommunication systems are going towards high frequencies as such ranges are in great demand in nowadays' wireless devices. However, in high frequencies, the signal is subjected to rain attenuation. For that, in this study, rain rate intensity has been extracted from radar data. Then, the rain attenuation was computed along the way to (MEASAT 3) satellite starting from (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia). After that, the rain attenuation was obtained by a calculation in reference to a given ITU-R formula. AUTOCAD software was used to model the case and to facilitate computing some dimensions. Also, MATLAB software was responsible for processing the raw data and doing many complex calculations prior to rain intensity determination phase. Thus, the analysis employed the actual vertical rain intensity profile along the way between the two points mentioned. The novelty of this study is to assess the variation of the rain intensity obtained from radar readings and its impact on the satellite communication link in this rainy tropical region. The analysis of multi-elevation angle from radar data for slant path rain attenuation has been accomplished by means of rain intensity and attenuation data collected in Malaysia. As a final finding observed that the rain attenuation is about 18.87 dB at 0.01% of time. When the higher rain rate on the satellite link equal 93 mm/h at 2.430 km altitude and the effective rain height is between 4.301 km to 5.617 km and this result agreed with ITU-R G3 studies (5km).