Assessment of joint attenuation distributions in the 14/11 and 14/12 GHz bands on low-fade margin international satellite services

Satellite business services make use of small earth stations with limited fade margins against rain-induced signal outages. These margins are typically 2 to 3 dB and require new techniques to model the propagation environment at low elevation angles. Although the effects of temporal variation can be important considerations for any microwave link, the potential impact is greater for intercontinental circuits if the probability of enhanced fading at the two terminals coincide during a critical period. A detailed investigation has been carried out in order to determine whether there was a potential for such correlated outages and to evaluate its overall significance