Prediction method for rain rate and rain propagation attenuation for K-band satellite communications links in Tropical areas

This paper deals with a prediction method using the hidden markov model (hmm) for rain rate and rain propagation attenuation for k-band satellite communications links in tropical areas. as is well known,the k-band frequency is susceptible of being affected by atmospheric conditions,especially rain conditions. the wavelength of the k-band frequency,which approaches the size of a rain droplet,causes the signal strength to be attenuated and absorbed easily by the rain droplets. therefore,in order to maintain the quality of system performance for k-band satellite communications links,special attention has to be paid to rain rate and rain propagation attenuation. thus,a prediction method for rain rate and rain propagation attenuation based on hmm was developed to process measurement data. the measured and predicted data were then compared with itu-r recommendations. the results indicate that the data show similarity with the model of recommendation itu-r p.837-5 for rain rate and the model of recommendation itu-r p.618-10 for rain propagation attenuation. meanwhile,statistical data for measured and predicted data such as fade duration and interfade duration show insignificant discrepancies with the model of recommendation itu-r p.1623-1 © 2014,published by itb journal publisher.