A physically based methodology for the evaluation of the rain attenuation on terrestrial radio links

This contribution presents a new physically based methodology for the prediction of rain attenuation experienced by a microwave terrestrial link. The meteorological environment for the site of interest is reproduced through a set of synthetic rain fields generated by the MultiEXCELL model starting from the local rainfall statistics. The fade levels are calculated numerically by simulating the interaction of a given link geometry with the precipitation field. Eventually, the performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated against the reference data included in the ITU-R DBSG3 database of line-of-sight radio link measurements. When compared to the method currently adopted by the ITU-R in recommendation P.530–13, the proposed methodology shows much better results, both in terms of overall root mean square of the estimation error and in terms of performance stability with the link characteristics, namely operational frequency and path length.