Rain Attenuation Prediction Model for Lagos at Millimeter Wave Bands

Abstract

Abstract Lagos, Nigeria (6.35°N, 3.2°E), is a coastal station in the rain forest area of southwestern Nigeria with an altitude of 38 m. Since most communication now takes place above the X band because of congestion of lower bands, it was necessary to look into ways of maximizing X-band usage. There are inadequate data for use in rain propagation studies at microwave frequencies, and even less so at millimeter wave bands where most of the signal depolarization and fading has been discovered to exist. The proposed model is a modification of the International Telecommunication Union–Radio Communication Sector (ITU-R) model combined with locally obtained regression coefficients for estimating specific attenuation as proposed by G. Olalere Ajayi. The Dissanayake, Allnutt, and Haidara (DAH), Simple Attenuation Model (SAM), and ITU-R attenuation prediction models were investigated along with the proposed model. The ITU-R model was observed to produce the best results at 40 GHz, with percentage error values of 0.61%, 0.55%, and 0.49% at 0.1%, 0.01%, and 0.001% of the time, respectively. In comparison, the proposed prediction model showed good performance at 20-GHz down-link frequency, with percentage error values of 3.6%, 3.3%, and 2.9% at 0.1%, 0.01%, and 0.001% of the time, respectively. The obtained results also showed good agreement with other similar works in the open literature. The results presented in this work are valuable for the design and planning of a satellite link in the tropical regions.