Rain attenuation characteristics at 12 GHz on an Earth-space path

To clarify rain attenuation characteristics for satellite communications at frequencies above 10 GHz, we have carried out continuous measurements of the level of a receive signal at 12.6 GHz from the Japanese SUPERBIRD-B satellite by using a 3.6 m antenna. Based on the data (sample time: 10 s) obtained for one year from October 1996 to September 1997, the paper describes the analyzed results such as the monthly and yearly cumulative time distributions of rain attenuation and rain rate, the comparison between measured values and predicted ones of rain attenuation, the effective height of rainfall region vs, rain rate, the correlation between clock-10 s rain rate and clock-1 min rain rate, and the duration properties of rain attenuation and rain rate.