PREDICTION OF FADE DURATIONS DUE TO RAIN IN SATELLITE COMMUNICATION-SYSTEMS

The paper discusses the prediction of long-term fade duration statisti cs in slant paths, obtained from rain attenuation time series simulate d with the synthetic storm technique (with input from 1-min rain rate time series). The results of the prediction were tested against the ex perimental fade duration statistics collected at three sites of the Si rio experiment in Italy at 11.6 GHz. Predicted and measured statistics are very similar for fade durations longer than about 64-128 s, which represent a fundamental lower limit to fade duration prediction using 1-min rain rate time series. The short durations have not been reprod uced because they are mainly caused by tropospheric turbulence, not by the space-time structure of rain, well described statistically by the synthetic storm technique. The prediction is not sensitive to rainsto rm speed.