On the Relationship Between the Spatial Correlation of Point Rain Rate and of Rain Attenuation on Earth-Space Radio Links

This contribution presents an analytical expression to predict the spatial correlation of the rain attenuation A impairing two Earth-space radio links in a site diversity configuration (A) as a function of the spatial correlation of the rain precipitation affecting the area (R), of the distance between the two stations d and of the electrical and geometrical characteristics of the links. Well-established properties of the rain field (i.e. quasi-ergodicity and spatial stationarity) are exploited in the derivation of the proposed analytical expression, whose accuracy is evaluated by means of an extensive set of rain field data collected by the NIMROD weather radar network in the UK. Results indicate a satisfactory prediction performance in the 10-50 GHz frequency range, with negligible dependence on the site separation distance d and on the electrical and geometrical characteristics of the system.