Attenuation Statistics For Millimetre-Wave Links in Tropical Regions

In tropical countries with high rainfall rates, rainfall and attenuation vary with location. Therefore, accurate estimation of rain fade margin in each location is crucial to predict rain attenuation in designing Millimeter Wave (mmWave) links to achieve an availability of 99.99%. The rainfall prediction method recommended by ITU-R might show inaccuracy in the tropical area, as has been reported by many. In this work, local rainfall statistical data were obtained from the TRMM 3A25 and 3B43 recorded data. The results show that different cities show different rainfall statistics. This leads to differences in the suggested rain fade margin or maximum link lengths for different cities. Results also indicate a potential difficulty of having a mm Wave cell radius of more than 200 meters with 99.99% availability in the tropics.