Performance of full-duplex wireless back-haul link under rain effects using e-band 73 GHz and 83 GHz in tropical area

Abstract

This paper presents rain attenuation effects on the performance of the full-duplex link in a tropical region based on one-year measurement data at 73.5- and 83.5-GHz E-band for distances of 1.8 km (longer links) and 300 m (shorter links). The measured rain attenuations were analyzed for four links, and the throughput degradation due to rain was investigated. The findings from this work showed that the rain attenuation for both frequencies (73.5 and 83.5 GHz) of E-band links are the same. The rain rates above 108 and 193 mm/h caused an outage for the longer and shorter links, respectively. The 73.5 and 83.5 GHz bands can support the full-duplex wireless back-haul link under rainy conditions with outage probability of 2.9 × 10-4 and 6 × 10-5 for the longer and shorter links, respectively. This work also finds that the heavy rain with rain rates above 80 mm/h for long link and 110 mm/h for short link causes about 94% and 0.90% degradation of maximum throughput. The application of these findings would help improve the architecture and service of full-duplex wireless E-band links that are established at other sites and in other tropical areas.