Initial study of rainfall rates distribution and simulation of terrestrial microwave links using EUMETSAT’s Multi-Sensor Precipitation Estimate in Malaysia

Abstract

Radio links operating at high frequency level are likely to suffer scattering and absorption losses due to hydrometeors. The largest hydrometeor fade mechanism is rain fade and it is widely recognized to trigger outages on microwave links. Radio engineers and planners often use rain rate as a parameter to calculate and predict attenuation/fade on microwave links. Typically, rain rate distribution with 1 minute integration time is needed for predicting rain fade statistic. This paper presents the initial study of rainfall rates distribution obtained from EUMETSAT’s Multi-Sensor Precipitation Estimate (MPE) and attempts to simulate them with microwave links. Rainfall rate distributions collected from EUMETSAT’s MPE are compared with the ITU-R model and rain gauge data for corroboration purposes. Additionally, terrestrial microwave links are simulated from rainfall rates obtained from MPE and compared with ITU-R terrestrial fade model.