Analysis of the interference due to differential rain attenuation induced by an adjacent path on a dual-site diversity Earth-space system

Knowledge of interference effects are of the utmost importance to the reliable design of satellite communication systems. In this paper interference caused by differential rain attenuation from an adjacent Earth-space system operating at the same frequency is considered as dominant. In particular, a method to predict rain differential attenuation statistics used for single-site Earth-space systems is extended to include dual-site diversity systems. Just as with the original method the modified one is again based on a model of convective rain cells and on the lognormal model for point rainfall rate statistics. The effects of various parameters on the diversity gain, corresponding to the carrier-to-interference ratio, are calculated numerically, leading to some very useful conclusions.