Micro scale site diversity as a rain attenuation countermeasure in communication systems

In the paper we have reported and discussed experimental results concerning the diversity gain for couples of sites distances, D, ranging from 500 m (micro scale SD) to 3000 m (small scale SD), at 19.77 GHz, in 31.6/spl deg/ elevation angle slant paths. The main findings, however, are independent of carrier frequency and can be reliably scaled to higher frequencies, e.g. to 47.2 GHz foreseen for the down links of the Sky Station. The results have been derived by using the synthetic storm technique applied to a large set of rain rate data collected in Central Italy along a linear array of 7 rain gauges.