Differences in the dynamic properties of rain fade between temperate and tropical regions

Understanding the dynamic properties of rain attenuation is important for designing effective attenuation mitigation methods, especially for Ka-band frequencies, which are particularly sensitive to degradation by rain attenuation. In this paper, the fade duration and fade slope are estimated using satellite data from Thailand and Japan, to investigate the characteristics of rain attenuation in tropical and temperate regions, respectively. For the tropical region, data from the Thaicom 2 and 3 satellites are used, and data from a Japanese communication satellite (CS) are used for the temperate area. Due to the different operating frequencies of the Thaicom 2 and 3 and the CS satellites, the scaling formula from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) R P.618-12 is used to standardize the data. The Thaicom satellite frequencies of 12.57 (Thaicom 2) and 12.59 (Thaicom 3) GHz in the Ku-band are scaled up to 19.45 GHz, the operating frequency of the CS satellite. Finally, differences of the fade duration and fade slope property in tropical and temperate areas are found and it is confirmed that the rain attenuation effect in tropical areas is more serious than in temperate areas.