A Stochastic Synthetic Storm Technique (S-SST) for Orbit and Site Diversity Studies

In this article, we present a method for extending the unidimensional synthetic storm technique (SST), when used in simulation mode, that is, for synthesizing rain attenuation time series. (The alternative mode being the production of yearly rain attenuation statistics.) Such extension is to the 2-D case with a validity limitation to distances not too far from where the input rain rate recording has been made. This is possible thanks to the fact that we are interested in slant links where the path length subjected to rain is only of a few km. Similarly, this technique would be valid for short terrestrial paths. We need to bring in the second dimension: we are interested in site and orbit diversity simulations involving spaced locations and/or converging links. We introduce the simultaneous modeling of rain at different, not too far off, locations by taking into consideration the Gaussian multivariate characteristics of the natural logarithm of rain rate fields. Spatial effects, thus, introduced are achieved with the addition of realistic (even nonisotropic) cross-correlation functions.