Assessment of rainfall rate and fade event duration for earth-space satellite links design in Nigeria

Abstract

The quest for advanced digitalized technology requires the knowledge of rainfall duration as a function of signal fading events. The assessment of events duration and rain rate for applications on Earth-space microwave links design are examined in the present work. The study has been carried out based on measurements along a set of rain gauge networks sited in five different locations across different regions in Nigeria. The degrees of the influence of rainfall rates for the outage period of the signals are tested along a direct-to-home Eutelsat satellite link operating at 12.25 GHz at one of the sites, Akure, Nigeria. The results would be useful in optimizing link budgeting, especially for the low-availability satellite systems over Nigeria. It would also serve as a benchmark for assessing the level of degradation that could be encountered in the switchover to digital broadcasting as well as 5G applications in Nigeria.