Mitigation of weather on channel propagation for satellite communications

Abstract

This paper investigates weather effects on a satellite communication (SATCOM) link communication channel model. Specifically, rain attenuation in the Ka band and X band of the SATCOM link for both uplink and downlink scenarios are presented. The weather model for the SATCOM link uses a Markov chain model with an average probability and transition probability for different states of weather, to investigate the impact of dynamic weather on the SATCOM link channel propagation model. Also, a power control method is proposed to achieve the required carrier to noise ratio in a SATCOM scenario using a Bayesian Network in Netica. The Bayesian Network models the space-ground link geometry and transmit power control to adapt to the dynamic weather. Simulations are implemented for the weather states during relatively long and short periods, path loss variations, and transmit power distributions over different scenarios. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed weather model, Markov chain model, and the power control method for SATCOM.