Enhancement of the Synthetic Storm Technique for the Prediction of Rain Attenuation Time Series at EHF

A physically based rain attenuation prediction model for Earth-space links, namely the enhanced synthetic storm technique (E-SST), is presented. Different from the original SST, the E-SST receives as input detailed information on the rain height and on the storm velocity, and it discriminates between stratiform and convective rain events having a different impact on the link. The rain attenuation prediction accuracy of E-SST, both as applied directly and as embedded into a more accurate frequency scaling technique, is evaluated against a full year of propagation data collected by the NASA equipment installed at Politecnico di Milano in the frame of the Alphasat Aldo Paraboni propagation experiment. To this aim, a novel methodology to isolate the contribution of rain attenuation from the received beacon power is devised and presented. Results indicate that E-SST represents an accurate and reliable tool for the prediction of rain attenuation at EHF, both on a statistical basis (direct application) and on an event basis (frequency scaling).