A study of satellite channel utilization in the presence of rain attenuation in Florida

Rain attenuation is the most dominant cause of signal degradation in satellite links operating at Ka-band. This is a particularly serious issue for ground terminal stations located in a sub-tropical region such as state of Florida. Presently, most rain compensation algorithms are based on the use of a fixed, large fade margin to combat occasional deep fades. However, the use of a fixed margin, especially for a rainy region, results in an inefficient use of channel capacity for a high percentage of the time. This paper uses an adaptive rain fade counter-measure based on the effective utilization of the channel capacity for several Florida locations with links operating in the Ka-band. In order to determine the outage rates both in terms of channel capacity and BER, Manning's (1990) rain attenuation prediction model, based on the rain history of the transmitting and receiving stations has been employed.<>