The impact of scattering conditions identification method on the processing of satellite beacon data using microwave profiling radiometer measurements

Satellite communications at Ka and Q/V bands are sensitive to atmospheric impairments. In order to build proper Fade Mitigation techniques, based on statistical models, extensive measurements of satellite signals together with atmospheric effects have to be performed. The procedures for combining beacon and radiometer data are sensitive to the accuracy of correctly recognized scattering atmosphere. Previous measurement campaigns utilized various approaches for rough estimations, which were then followed by visual inspection of the retrieved signals. If these methods were made fully automatic, the subjectivity of human observation would be eliminated, while the comparability of the obtained results would be improved. In this paper, the impact of scattering conditions detection method on the accuracy of total attenuation statistics is analyzed and a new adaptive method to detect scattering is proposed. The study shows the relation between the threshold selection and accuracy of cumulative attenuation distributions. In general, it proves to be more reliable to set the thresholds conservatively. However, in order to achieve better performance, optimal threshold does not suffice. The motivation for the search of better detection principles is justified by observation of the results, obtained by the newly proposed method.