Fast tropospheric delay predictions for antenna height diversity

Terrestrial microwave links sometimes suffer from signal fading which may be relieved with antenna diversity or frequency diversity. Vertical spacing of the antennas has been known empirically to offer performance gains for many links. A fast new method for tropospheric delay predictions is discussed. It uses Mathematica for critical functional fits to refractivity profiles, and a critical closed-form integration. A practical antenna diversity example is shown, with reference to Sylvain (see ibid., vol.43, no.7, p.2271, 1995).