Analysis of short term scintillation effects of Ku band satellite links in Sri Lanka

Scintillation effect is a dominant atmospheric impairment among the various contributing factors for low fade margin communication systems operating on high frequency bands such as Ku. This paper discusses the analysis of tropospheric scintillation effect under clear sky conditions where the other attenuation contributions such as rain, dense clouds is minimum. The experiment was setup at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka using a a Ku band satellite downlink operating on a moderately high elevation angle of 45 degrees. The observed scintillation intensity was 0:027 dB over a short-term stationary period of 18:76 minutes The log amplitude and variance distributions showed a satisfactory conformance to the prediction models with the variance being better described by a loglogistic distribution.