Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Attenuation in Sand and Dust Storms

The attenuation and phase delay due to sand and dust storms are obtained by using the effective material property technique and general formulation of the complex propagation factor. The validity of attenuation is verified by Ghobrial etal.'s formula. Attenuations obtained for various frequencies are shown in this letter. It is found that the attenuation decreases sharply as the visibility increases. It is also proven that the attenuation is negligible except for frequencies above 30 GHz and for very dense storms. It is found that cross polarization may be serious when a wave propagation path over 1 km has visibilities below 10 m, which may cause signal loss in microwave and millimeter-wave links. The effective material property technique and general formulation of the complex propagation factor have shown a quick and easy way of calculating the attenuation and phase delay due to sand and dust storms, which otherwise requires complicated and expensive methods of calculation and measurement.