The SC EXCELL model for prediction of rain attenuation on terrestrial radio links

Abstract

The SC EXCELL (Stratiform/Convective EXponential CELL) model, originally devised for the prediction of the complementary cumulative distribution function of rain attenuation (henceforth P(A)) on Earth-space radio links, is tested here in its ability to predict also the P(A) on terrestrial links. Thanks to its physical soundness in representing the rainfall environment, the proposed method does not require any calibration procedure on existing data, as is typically the case of most of the semi-empirical models proposed so far. When tested against the global DBSG3 database made available by the International Telecommunication Union – Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), the proposed model shows an improvement in the prediction accuracy with respect to the method currently recommended by the ITU-R.