Diurnal Effects on Satellite Network Performance Measured In Tropical Region

Abstract

The performance and availability of Ku band satellite Broadband and DTH services are affected by rain fade.. Direct -to-home very Small aperture terminal system operating at frequencies above 10 GHz in tropical climate are subjected to many fade occurrences due to heavy rain. This paper presents diurnal varation on the performance of DTH (Direct to home) broadcasting service for the month of February. Keyword: DTH service, diurnal variation, quality of service, rain attenuation, I. Introduction In the design of Ku band satellite links such as direct to home very small aperture terminals (DTH/VSAT) systems, detailed propagation information must be needed to provides better performance, availability, and quality of service (1).These Ku band services are affected by outages for time-critical transmission such as real-time news and sports broadcasting. The DTH yearly availabilities is of 99.5% so the corresponding outage of 0.5% is equivalent to 44 hours per Year. These 44 hours of outage are not usually distributed evenly but are more likely to occur at certain times of the day and are quite often concentrated within a particular season. Such variations will affect customers' services. The probable duration of rain at a given level, effect of weather conditions on the performance of service, what time of the day it is highly affect the service these are the important aspect that will contribute to improve availability of DTH service which leads improve customers satisfaction.(2) II. DTH BROADCASTING SERVICES DTH network consist of broadcasting center, satellites, encoders, multiplexers, modulators and DTH receivers. A DTH service provider has to lease Ku band transponder from the satellite. The encoder converts the audio, video and data signal into the digital format and the multiplexer mixes these signals. AT the user end, there will be small dish and set top box to decode and viewed numerous channels (3)