The Wet-Antenna Effect—A Factor to be Considered in Future Communication Networks

An accurate design of the fading margin in wireless communication networks requires good modeling of the relationship between the rain rate and the attenuation. In this paper, we discuss the effect of the wet antenna (WA) on the fading margin. We claim that this effect is not negligible in commercial E-band (i.e., 60-90 GHz) technologies, where the microwave links are relatively short and the sensitivity of the signal to attenuation induced by rain is significant. Consequently, we propose a method for estimating the WA-induced attenuation, so it can be incorporated in the current models. Different from previous studies, our proposed method can be implemented on received signal level measurements, which are standardly produced by commercial microwave links (CMLs) and a single rain gauge. We demonstrate our results using actual measurements taken by 73 GHz CMLs of about 1 km, provided by Ericsson.