KA Band Propagation Campaign in the Tropical Region of Peninsular Malaysia and Statistical Analysis

Satellite communication systems operating at high frequencies (Ka-band and above) are severely impaired by atmospheric phenomena, particularly in tropical and equatorial regions, where the climatic characteristics affect several propagation parameters, including rain, cloud and gaseous attenuation, fade duration, fade slope, sky noise emission and site diversity gain. With the support of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, under European Space Agency contract, a Ka-band propagation measurement campaign is being carried out in two sites in Malaysia. The main objectives of this campaign are to improve the characterization of the radio channel modelling and ground system requirements for the development of Ka-band SatCom systems covering tropical regions, assess the accuracy of current prediction models with particular regard to the statistical distribution of rain attenuation, and improve the statistical models for the parameters describing signal fade duration, signal fade slope and gain of site and time diversity techniques. This paper presents the measurement results of the first year of the campaign analyzing the first and second order experimental statistics and comparing them with the corresponding ITU-R models.