The rain range experiment--Propagation through a simulated rain environment

The rain range experiment was conducted to test the adequacy of the assumptions usually made in the analysis of attenuation or phase shift due to rain: spherical drop shape, Mie scattering for a single drop, and single scattering theory for the coherent summation of the effects of each drop. A sprayer system was built that provided a stable drop size distribution that was measured and used for the estimation of the attenuation and phase shift on a line-of-sight measurement path through the spray. Measurements of attenuation and phase shift were made using vertical and horizontal polarization at 7.9 GHz and vertical polarization at 33.9 GHz. The results of the experiment show agreement between measurements and the theoretical model. The 7.9 GHz data also showed the attenuation and phase shift for horizontal polarization to be higher than for vertical polarization.