Direct extraction of rain-induced impairments on satellite communication channel in subtropical climate at K and Ka bands

Rain induced attenuation prediction is considered a fundamental step in the analysis of satellite communication links for frequencies above 10 GHz, due to their major effect on the satellite communication link and services. This paper presents an approach for predicting and analysing the satellite link performance during rainfall in subtropical climate for K and Ka frequency bands. The study characterizes the Iraqi climate as one of the subtropical regions based on the rain effects and split it into impairments related segments. Moreover, the study presents the first analysis and database for rainfall impairments in Iraq to the best of authors’ knowledge along with a proposed method for direct extraction of rain-induced impairments. It is found from the results that the rain attenuation at the northern region has a higher impact than the central and the southern regions, consequently the performance of rain attenuation impairments is divided into two segments: high rain impairments segment (HRIS) in the northern region and low rain impairments segment (LRIS) (in the central and southern regions). Nevertheless, it is found that, out of 9 stations, the prediction model based on ITU and Crane estimated rainfall rates are inaccurate in 6 and 5 stations, respectively. Substantially, the results declare that the proposed method predicts the rain attenuation value based on the frequency given with RMSEs under 0.6 and 1.5 for LRIS and HRIS, respectively. This reviles the qualified accuracy of the proposed method and the frequency-dependent coefficients. Such achievements could be an appropriate preliminary design benchmark for earth–sky microwave links, and also provide a broad idea of rain attenuation and link performance for microwave engineers.