Availability and performance of satellite links suffering from interference by an adjacent satellite and rain fades

An analysis is presented relating rain attenuation statistics to BEP perfor mance of Earth-space links subjected to interference by an adjacent satelli te operating in the same frequency band. A systematic design method is prop osed that takes into account the BER objectives specified by the ITU for th e design of satellite links. Numerical results based on the proposed method have been obtained to investigate the combined effect of rain and interfer ence for the Ku and Ka bands and for various data rates and climatic zones.