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The Ka-band propagation experiments conducted by ONERA in Toulouse (43.57°E, 1.47°N) in the southwest of France started in 2009 and is still on-going. The equipment comprises a beacon Earth station, a profiling radiometer, and a rain gauge. The ground station measures the received beacon signal using a 10-Hz sampling rate. The profiling radiometer measures the sky brightness temperatures at five Ka-band and seven V-band channels, surface temperature, surface humidity, and surface pressure. From July 2009 to March 2011, the beacon receiver recorded the 19.7-GHz (horizontal polarization) HotBird 6 beacon signal along a slant path of 38.6° of elevation angle. Since April 2011, the beacon receiver has been recording the 20.2-GHz (vertical polarization) Astra 3B beacon signal along a slant path of 35.1° of elevation angle. This paper aims at providing a complete description of the ONERA Data Processing Tool (in particular the methodology followed to retrieve total attenuation) used to compute 4 years (from July 2009 to June 2013) of copolar attenuation statistics. The experimental setup and the characteristics of the Earth-space links are briefly described. The complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of total attenuation for the whole period is presented and compared with ITU-R recommendations. The measured CCDF of the rainfall rate is computed and compared with ITU-R Rec. P.837 and will also be used as input for the rain attenuation model given in ITU-R Rec. P.618. The measured CCDFs of total attenuation duration and total attenuation slope are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Recommendation ITU-R P.1853-1, a stochastic approach is proposed to generate long-term rain attenuation time series A(t), including rain and no rain periods anywhere in the world. Nevertheless, its dynamic properties have been validated so far from experimental rain attenuation time series collected at mid-latitudes only. In the present paper, an effort is conducted to derive analytically the first- and second-order statistical properties of the ITU rain attenuation time-series synthesizer. It is then shown that the ITU synthesizer does not reproduce the first-order statistics (particularly the rain attenuation cumulative distribution function CDF), however, given as input parameters. It also prevents any rain attenuation correlation function other than exponential to be reproduced, which could be penalizing if a worldwide synthesizer that accounts for the local climatology has to be defined. Therefore, a new rain attenuation time-series synthesizer is proposed. It assumes a mixed Dirac-lognormal modeling of the absolute rain attenuation CDF and relies on a stochastic generation in the Fourier plane. It is then shown analytically that the new synthesizer reproduces much better the first-order statistics given as input parameters and enables any rain attenuation correlation function to be reproduced. The ability of each synthesizer to reproduce absolute rain attenuation CDFs given by Recommendation ITU-R P.618 is finally compared on a worldwide basis. It is then concluded that the new rain attenuation time-series synthesizer reproduces the rain attenuation CDF much better, preserves the rain attenuation dynamics of the current ITU synthesizer for simulations at mid-latitudes, and, if it proves to be necessary for worldwide applications, is able to reproduce any rain attenuation correlation function. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From January 2017 to December 2021, Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA) and Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) operated a beacon receiver able to record the 20.1995 GHz beacon signal of the Amazonas-3 satellite at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. A rain gauge was also deployed on site to collect rainfall rate measurements concurrently to beacon data. All years of the experiment, except 2019, had excellent data availability, hence giving four full years of data (2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021). First, the climatic characteristics of French Guiana are shown. Second, the propagation experiment and the data processing methodology are described. Third, the results of the statistical analysis are highlighted and commented. Comparisons are performed with the prediction methods of Recommendation ITU-R P.837-7 (rainfall rate), Recommendation ITU-R P.618-13 (rain attenuation), Recommendation ITU-R P.678-3 (variability of propagation phenomena), and Recommendation ITU-R P.1623-1 (fade dynamics). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three global rainfall rate prediction methods are evaluated in their ability to estimate local precipitation statistics, which are the key to predict the impact of rain on the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the atmosphere. Specifically, the International Telecommunication Union-Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) P.837-6, model for rainfall statistics estimation (MORSE), and the ITU-R P.837-7 prediction methods are tested against long-term rainfall data collected in 19 sites in Ireland. The results indicate that the ITU-R P.837-7 prediction method delivers the best performance, and that both the ITU-R P.837-6 prediction method and MORSE exhibit a positive bias, likely due to the overestimation of the yearly rain amount in the maps used as input to such models. The results of the testing activity provide information on the accuracy of rainfall rate prediction methods at regional level, an important factor to consider given the direct link between the magnitude of rain-induced attenuation, and the operational frequency of wireless communication links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Propagation effects such as rain or clouds attenuation cause deeper fades in the Ka-band than at lower frequencies. In this collaborative paper, the main results of four long-term Ka-band propagation campaigns are presented. The experiments are carried out in Ottawa, Canada; Aveiro, Portugal; Madrid, Spain; and Toulouse, France. Attenuation statistics are derived from satellite beacon data collected over 6 years at Aveiro, 5 years at Ottawa and Madrid and 2 years at Toulouse. Multi-year measurements allow the production of more stable statistics reflecting the long-term behavior of propagation phenomena and to investigate its year-to-year variability. The beacon signal data was monitored and collected on a continuous basis over the whole measurement period. After a brief introduction of the experiments, rain rate and excess attenuation results are discussed, first for a common measurement period and later for the whole database available. Seasonal attenuation statistics for Ottawa and Aveiro are compared. Finally, fade duration and fade slope statistics derived at three locations are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]