Propagation modelling and mapping of rain, clouds and water vapour to cope with spatial and temporal variability

The increasing demand of advanced applications to be delivered to end users using SatCom systems requires to shift to higher operating frequencies to guarantee the necessary bandwidth. In this scenario, severe propagation impairments, which are strictly related to the space-time structure of the atmosphere, limit the system performance. This contribution presents an overview on the availability of data and models for the statistical characterization of the atmospheric constituents of interest to propagation-oriented applications. On the one side, models based on Numerical Weather Predictions are introduced and afterwards, the usefulness of site specific data is discussed. Finally, this contribution deals with the characterization of the rainfall spatial distribution, whose knowledge is of key importance to the planning of smart fade mitigation techniques such as site diversity.