Duration analysis of simultaneous fading events over a large spatial scale

On-board resources sharing is a technique envisaged for increasing the capacity of future digital satellite links. The definition of the design criteria for such systems arises from the analysis of the spatial correlation of the fading phenomena interesting the earth stations. The main design figure is represented by the probability of joint fading events simultaneously occurring in groups of locations. In the present work, attention is focused on the durations of the joint rain events in order to enable the designer to know not only the probability of system overcharge, but also the probability of the system's remaining in this condition for a given duration. From the earth-station point of view this is the same as knowing the average waiting time under the condition of no extra assistance from the satellite. The distribution of excess duration probability is presented for three distance ranges and two rain levels.<>