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Radar simulation and physical modeling of time diversity satellite systems
Author(s) -
Capsoni Carlo,
D'Amico Michele,
Nebuloni Roberto
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
radio science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1944-799X
pISSN - 0048-6604
DOI - 10.1029/2009rs004142
Subject(s) - radar , time diversity , attenuation , remote sensing , satellite , rain gauge , computer science , elevation (ballistics) , diversity gain , elevation angle , diversity scheme , precipitation , communications satellite , weather radar , meteorology , environmental science , telecommunications , geology , fading , geography , physics , engineering , aerospace engineering , decoding methods , astronomy , azimuth , optics
Satellite telecommunication systems that make use of frequencies higher than 10 GHz can experience strong attenuation due to rain. One of the countermeasures that can be adopted is time diversity. In this paper the performance of the time diversity technique is investigated through both radar simulation and modeling. We first exploit an extensive database of radar maps of precipitation collected in northern Italy to generate synthetic time series of attenuation; the performance of the time diversity technique is evaluated for different frequencies and elevation angles. The same analysis is then performed using the ExCell attenuation prediction model, whose input parameters are elevation, frequency and polarization of the Earth terminal, and the “effective” rainfall rate. The model‐predicted diversity gain is found to agree well with that obtained through radar simulation, demonstrating that the performance of the time diversity technique can be evaluated from the time series of rain rate, acquired by a rain gauge.