Short-Term Rain Attenuation Predictor for Terrestrial Links in Tropical Area

This letter describes a short-term rain attenuation predictor model for terrestrial radio links located in tropical area. The predictor is based on the fade-slope statistics that are modeled by a generalization of Van de Kamp (VDK) distribution for rain attenuation levels between 1 and 30 dB. The predictor can improve adaptive fade countermeasures as it predicts the rain attenuation in the next 10 s based on the current attenuation value. The model is applied to data collected in four links located in tropical region, and its results show that the absolute values of prediction errors are under 2.9 dB for 99.9% of the predictions.