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The quest for advanced digitalized technology requires the knowledge of rainfall duration as a function of signal fading events. The assessment of events duration and rain rate for applications on Earth-space microwave links design are examined in the present work. The study has been carried out based on measurements along a set of rain gauge networks sited in five different locations across different regions in Nigeria. The degrees of the influence of rainfall rates for the outage period of the signals are tested along a direct-to-home Eutelsat satellite link operating at 12.25 GHz at one of the sites, Akure, Nigeria. The results would be useful in optimizing link budgeting, especially for the low-availability satellite systems over Nigeria. It would also serve as a benchmark for assessing the level of degradation that could be encountered in the switchover to digital broadcasting as well as 5G applications in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• 1-min and 5-min integration time rain rates were measured. • Two rain rate models were used to predict 1-min rain rate. • The measured and predicted 1-min rain rates were compared. • Lavergnat-Gole model is the optimal rain rate prediction model. An important characteristic of rainfall levels at a particular place is the statistical distribution of rainfall rate. In this paper, 5-min integration time rainfall data for the Northcentral region of Nigeria was obtained from the Tropospheric Data Acquisition Network (TRODAN), Anyigba, Nigeria. Also, 1-min integration time rainfall was measured at Minna, Nigeria. In order to obtain the optimal rain rate model suitable for this region, two globally recognised rain rate models were critically evaluated and compared with the 1-min measurements. These are the ITU-R P.837-7 and Lavergnat-Gole (L-G) models. The results obtained showed that the ITU-R P.837-7 and L-G models respectively underestimated the measured rain rate by 7.3 mm/h and 9 mm/h at time percentage exceedance of 0.1%, while they underestimated the measured rain rate by 23.4 mm/h and 13 mm/h respectively at 0.01%. At 0.001%, the measured rain rate was overestimated by the ITU-R P.837-7 and L-G models by 27.4 mm/h and 3 mm/h respectively. Further performance evaluation of the predefined models was carried out using different error metrics such as sum of absolute error (SAE), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), standard deviation (STDEV) and Spearman's rank correlation. The results obtained adjudged the Lavergnat-Gole model as the best rain rate prediction model for this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]