A Terrestrial Rain Depolarization Compensation Experiment at 11.7 GHz

Depolarization caused by rain at 11.7 GHz is due to both differential phase shift and attenuation. In dual polarized communications systems it gives rise to interference which may be severe enough to cause an outage even though the allotted fade margin has not been exceeded. Described is a depolarization compensation experiment over a 10 km path with near circular polarization at 11.7 GHz. It made use of a turnstile junction feed system under computer control. Data presented demonstrate the stable performance of the method used during several rain events. At fades below about 15 dB significant isolation improvements were achieved, compared to a fixed cross-polarization channel. Finally, a method using the turnstile is suggested to receive two nonorthogonal signals without interference.