Rain front and rain area motions related to ku band satellite signal attenuation

Speeds and directions of the motion of rain areas that cause the attenuation of Ku-band satellite signals are estimated from the broadcast satellite (BS) signal levels simultaneously obtained at three locations of Osaka Electro-Communication University (Neyagawa, Osaka), Research Institute of Sustainable Humanosphere of Kyoto University (Uji, Kyoto), and Shigaraki MU Observatory (Koga, Shiga). The speeds and directions of rain area motion are compared with those of rain fronts obtained from image analyses of real time weather charts and rain cloud images recently published in the website by Japan Meteorological Agency. The speeds and directions of rain area motions estimated from the BS signals are in fairly good agreement with those estimated from these images of rain fronts and rain clouds down loaded from the websites, although the speeds tend to be faster in the BS signal measurements than in the images in the websites. So, the information on the rain area motions expected to be useful for site diversity techniques will be easily obtained by the image analysis methods presented by this study.