Fade duration statistics of millimetre wavelength terrestrial line-of-sight links

Fade duration statistics are important in describing the dynamics of expected quality when designing and using millimetre wireless links. The paper presents several years of measured duration statistics for four terrestrial line-of-sight links at 42.1 and 83.5 GHz in the Oslo-region, Norway. The measured durations are compared with models. Relatively good agreement is found for long durations using a method developed for attenuation caused by rainfall. Considering also short durations, a model based on a double lognormal distribution was found to give a good fit to the measured fade duration data, indicating that combination of effects, such as rain attenuation and scintillation, needs to be accounted for. In addition, statistical results of the number of fades with durations longer than 10 s are presented.