Rain fade

Rain fade refers primarily to the absorption of a microwave Radio Frequency (RF) signal by atmospheric rain, snow or ice, and losses are especially prevalent at frequencies above 11 GHz. It also refers to the degradation of a signal caused by the electromagnetic interference of the leading edge of a storm front. Rain fade can be caused by precipitation at the uplink or downlink location. However, it does not need to be raining at a location for it to be affected by rain fade, as the signal may pass through precipitation many miles away, especially if the satellite dish has a low look angle. From 5 to 20 percent of rain fade or satellite signal attenuation may also be caused by rain, snow or ice on the uplink or downlink antenna reflector, radome or feed horn.

Possible ways to overcome the effects of rain fade are site diversity, uplink power control, variable rate encoding, receiving antennas larger than the requested size for normal weather conditions, and hydrophobic coatings. Only superhydrophobic, Lotus effect surfaces repel snow and ice.

Uplink power control

The simplest way to compensate the rain fade effect in satellite communications is to increase the transmission power: this dynamic fade countermeasure is called uplink power control (UPC). Until more recently, uplink power control had a limited use since it could not provide very large margins without compressing the transmitting amplifier. Modern amplifiers coupled with advanced uplink power control systems (such as Glowlink's Model 3010) that offer automatic controls to prevent transponder saturation make uplink power control systems an effective, affordable and easy solution to rain fade in satellite signals.

Parallel fail-over links

In terrestrial point to point microwave systems ranging from 11 GHz to 80 GHz, a parallel backup link can be installed alongside a rain fade prone higher bandwidth connection. In this arrangement, a primary link such as an 80GHz 1Gbps full duplex microwave bridge may be calculated to have a 99.9% availability rate over the period of one year. The calculated 99.9% availability rate means that the link may be down for a cumulative total of ten or more hours per year as the peaks of rain storms pass over the area. A secondary lower bandwidth link such as a 5.8GHz based 100Mbps bridge may be installed parallel to the primary link, with routers on both ends controlling automatic failover to the 100Mbps bridge when the primary 1Gbps link is down due to rain fade. Using this arrangement, high frequency point to point links (23GHz+) may be installed to service locations many kilometers farther than could be served with a single link requiring 99.99% uptime over the course of one year.

CCIR interpolation formula

It is possible to extrapolate the cumulative attenuation distribution at a given location by using the CCIR interpolation formula:

A_p = A₀₀₁ 0.12 p^{-(0.546 - 0.0043 log₁₀ p)}.

where A_p is the attenuation in dB exceeded for a p percentage of the time and A₀₀₁ is the attenuation exceeded for 0.01% of the time.

ITU-R frequency scaling formula

According to the ITU-R, rain attenuation statistics can be scaled in frequency in the range 7 to 55 GHz by the formula

${\frac {A_{2}}{A_{1}}}=\left({\frac {b_{2}}{b_{1}}}\right)^{1-1.12\cdot 10^{-3}{\sqrt {b_{2}/b_{1}}}(b_{1}A_{1})^{0.55}}$

where

$b_{i}={\frac {f_{i}^{2}}{1+10^{-4}f_{i}^{2}}}$

and f is the frequency in GHz.

See also

• Fresnel zone
• Diversity scheme
• Glowlink Uplink Power Control