. The present study deals with the development of a low-cost microwave device devoted to the measurement of average rain rates observed along Earth–satellite links, the latter being characterized by a tropospheric path length of a few kilometres. The ground-based power measurements, which are made using the Ku-band television transmissions from several different geostationary satellites, are based on the principle that the atmospheric attenuation produced by rain encountered along each transmission path can be used to determine the path-averaged rain rate. This kind of device could be very useful in hilly areas where radar data are not available or in urban areas where such devices could be directly placed in homes by using residential TV antenna. The major difficulty encountered with this technique is that of retrieving rainfall characteristics in the presence of many other causes of received signal fluctuation, produced by atmospheric scintillation, variations in atmospheric composition (water vapour concentration, cloud water content) or satellite transmission parameters (variations in emitted power, satellite pointing). In order to conduct a feasibility study with such a device, a measurement campaign was carried out over a period of five months close to Paris. The present paper proposes an algorithm based on an artificial neural network, used to identify dry and rainy periods and to model received signal variability resulting from effects not related to rain. When the altitude of the rain layer is taken into account, the rain attenuation can be inverted to obtain the path-averaged rain rate. The rainfall rates obtained from this process are compared with co-located rain gauges and radar measurements taken throughout the full duration of the campaign, and the most significant rainfall events are analysed.

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Rainfall measurement from the opportunistic use of an Earth–space link in the Ku band

Rain attenuation is an important aspect of signal propagation above 10GHz frequency. The attenuation time series generation from point rain rate measurement is crucial due to unavailability of actual signal measurements. In this paper, a simple and realistic approach has been demonstrated for better estimation of rain attenuation using Ku-band signal propagation data and ground rain rate measurements at Kolkata, India. The ITU-R model of rain attenuation has been modifled by incorporating an efiective slant path model. The efiective slant path has been estimated and modelled in terms of a power-law relationship of rain rate data of 2007{2008. The methodology has been validated with the measured data of 2006. Comparison with ITU-R and SAM clearly demonstrates the improved predictability of the proposed model at the present tropical location.

/pdf/improving-rain-attenuation-estimation-modelling-of-effective-4cqle4qq9w.pdf

Improving Rain Attenuation Estimation: Modelling of Effective Path Length Using Ku-Band Measurements at a Tropical Location

The present study deals with the development of a low cost microwave device devoted to measure average rain rate observed along earth - satellite links. The principle is to use rain atmospheric attenuation along Earth - space links in Ku-band to deduce the path averaged rain rate. These links are characterized by a path length of a few km through the troposphere. Ground based power measurements are carried out by receiving TV channels from different geostationary satellites in Ku-band. The major difficulty in this study is to retrieve rain characteristics among many fluctuations of the received signal which are due to atmospheric scintillations, changes in the composition of the atmosphere (water vapour concentration, cloud water content) or satellite features (variation of the emitted power, satellite motions). In order to perform a feasibility study of such a device, a measurement campaign has been performed for five months near Paris. This paper proposes an algorithm based on an artificial neural network to identify drought and rainy periods and to suppress the variability of the received signal due to no-rain effects. Taking into account the height of the rain layer, rain attenuation is then inverted to obtain path averaged rain rate. Obtained rainfall rates are compared with co-located rain gauges and radar measurements on the whole experiment period, then the most significant rainy events are analyzed.

/pdf/rainfall-measurement-from-opportunistic-use-of-earth-space-2s8lace729.pdf

Rainfall measurement from opportunistic use of Earth-space link in Ku band

The phenomenon of scintillations in relation to rain attenuation of Ku-band satellite signals has been studied at a tropical location. The standard deviation (σ) of scintillations increases with attenuation up to a value in the range of 6-7 dB, beyond which σ decreases with attenuation. A technique is proposed to obtain some effective values of structure constant (Cn2) of refractive-index variation from the experimental observations of σ and rain rate (R). The value of Cn2 also increases with attenuation up to values in the 6-7-dB range and decreases beyond that value. The eddies in turbulent raining medium grow with rain rate, and consequently with attenuation, causing an increase in the outer scale (LO) of turbulence and thus increasing σ until LO reaches the size of the first Fresnel zone. In a further development, the contribution of LO toward Cn2 decreases, resulting in the decrease of fast fluctuations with rain attenuation.

Rain-Induced Scintillations and Attenuation of Ku-Band Satellite Signals at a Tropical Location

A comparison of measured attenuation series with the attenuation series obtained from rain rate measurement by using synthetic storm technique is made for Ku band signal at a tropical location. Validity of the model is tested for the long-term statistics in terms of the cumulative distribution of attenuation occurrence and fade duration. Applicability of the model is also shown to be valid event-wise. It has been demonstrated that the long term statistics of predicted rain attenuation are insensitive to storm translation speed. No significant differences are found when cumulative distributions of predicted attenuation values are compared for different data sampling intervals. It has been observed that there exists a good correlation between the predicted and measured values of attenuation for at least 80% of the events.

Time series prediction of rain attenuation from rain rate measurement using synthetic storm technique for a tropical location

Propagation measurements at Ku-band over an earth-space path have been carried out at Kolkata (22°34′ N, 88°29′ E) by receiving a signal at 11.172 GHz from the satellite NSS-6 (geostationary at 95°E). The amplitudes of the co-polar signal and the cross-polar component have been monitored along with the measurements of rain rate and drop size distribution by an optical raingauge and a Joss-type disdrometer, respectively. Three phenomena studied with the experimental data are rain attenuation, depolarization and scintillation. The rain attenuation observed experimentally tallies well with the values obtained from the point rain rate using a simple attenuation model, if the rain rate is low (less than 20 mm/h). The depolarization, indicated by an enhancement of the cross-polar component of the signal, is well correlated with the rain attenuation. The presence of large rain drops is found to have a more dominant role in determining the extent of depolarization than affecting the co-polar attenuation. The scintillation observations associated with the rain events indicate that the standard deviation of fast fluctuations increases with rain attenuation following a power-law.

/pdf/propagation-studies-at-ku-band-over-an-earth-space-path-at-2lfbzogxj9.pdf

Srijibendu Bagchi

Papers

Propagation studies at Ku-band over an earth-space path at Kolkata