Importance of Amplitude Scintillations in Millimetric Radio Links

Amplitude scintillations in millimetric radio propagation are not usually considered by systems engineers In this paper, the experimental measurements of these scintillations in a 36 GHz radio link have been fitted into a model suitable for the millimetric range. From it, the amplitude scintillations can be regarded as a noise component superimposed on the mean value, with some expected mean rate fading fo. The r.m.s. value of this noise is then used to determine the outages for the scintillation-type fading, as a function of the frequency and link distance. The implications of the results in the power budget are discussed and reference is made to the limiting performance of digital transmission.