Proposed rain fade mitigation technique for Ka-band space-Earth links in tropical climate

Abstract

Satellite communication systems are swayed towards superior capacity. Millimeter wave offers a huge bandwidth allocation, involves small-sized antenna requirement and experiences less congested spectrum environment. However, rain posses a crucial intimidation to such satellite communication links especially in tropical region where the hydrometeors can severely affect the signal. Rain is the factor that typically bounds the implementation of higher frequencies for satellite communications in this region. Time diversity is seemed to be a plausible mitigation technique to countermeasure such impairments. It is envisioned that the technique will not be requiring extensive auxiliary's equipment. This paper delineates the likely improvement of a future Ka-band frequency space-Earth link using proposed time diversity (TD) technique in tropical regions. The analyses relating to the performance prediction of a satellite communication link in tropical region assimilating TD scheme are also included. The recovery strategy and its associated equations were determined reflecting the memory capacity requirement of TD. The knowledge will be integrated accordingly at the receiver with hopes to mitigate attenuation due to rain endured by the propagation link.