Cell-site diversity performance of millimeter-wave fixed cellular systems operating at frequencies above 20 GHz

The dominant propagation factor affecting the reliability of millimeter-wave fixed cellular systems operating at frequencies above 20 GHz is rain attenuation. Cell-site diversity is an available method to reduce the rain outage time for these systems. The paper presents an analytical procedure for the evaluation of the outage performance of a cell-site diversity system. Numerical results are compared with available experimental data taken from Canada and the UK. The agreement was found to be quite encouraging. The dependence of cell-site diversity gain on climatic conditions is also investigated and some useful conclusions are deduced.