Polarization independence of tropospheric scintillation in clear sky: results from Olympus experiment at Spino d'Adda

Tropospheric scintillation plays an important role in low availability systems using frequencies above 10 GHz. The results presented show that amplitude scintillation is independent of polarization, as long as the transversal dimension of the first Fresnel zone is of the order of few meters as is the case in satellite systems working in the SHF or EHF bands. The results are based on high-resolution time series (50 samples/s) of vertical- and horizontal-polarized 19.77-GHz scintillation amplitude recorded at Spino d'Adda (45.4/spl deg/N) in clear sky (no rain) in a 30.6/spl deg/ slant path to the satellite Olympus in August and September 1992.