Modeling rain fading in satellite communications links

Radio signals transmitted via satellite are subjected to various impairments which may cause the received signal to be attenuated severly. In a mobile satellite link (mobile earth station to satellite or vice versa) signal attenuation is mainly due to the free space loss, shadowing and multipath propagation. In addition, the transmitted signal is also subjected to fading due to clouds and precipitation. A channel model which outputs signal attenuation due to clouds and precipitation as a function of time has not been developed so far, but is presented in this paper. This channel model can easily be applied to recorded data, i.e. the channel model can be adjusted to various scenarios and conditions such as climatic zone, transmit carrier frequency, elevation angle, season, and time of the day. The channel model can be used to carry out software simulations for both fixed and mobile satellite communication scenarios