Measurements of tropospheric scintillation on millimetre-wave satellite link

Tropospheric scintillation statistics in the millimetre-wave band have been obtained in Madrid using the ITALSAT satellite beacon at 50 GHz. Few studies have been conducted previously at this band. The UCL radiosonde-based method predicts fairly well the mean variance and the distribution of amplitude in the summer months, when scintillations are stronger. The ITU-R prediction model, based on surface meteorological parameters, performs worse.