Frequency Effects and the Elevation Angle Analysis of the Rain Attenuation in Malaysia

Congestion on frequency spectrum that was predetermined long time ago has stimulated the use of frequency above than 10GHz in order to fulfil the needs and requirements of the customers. However, operating at this frequency band will cause the system to be more easily susceptible to signal loss due to natural phenomena such as heavy rain. Because of the fading effects, accurate prediction of rain induced attenuation by using 1-min rainfall rate becomes important. Many researchers have proposed various types of predictive models to estimate the rain attenuation over the world. However, there is no appropriate model that can predict the rain attenuation accurately. At Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), the International Telecommunication Union model-Region (ITU-R) has shown the best prediction compared to other models. ITU-R model is used to analyze the effects of rain attenuation at different frequency and elevation angles. From the analysis, it was found that as the frequency of operation increases and the angle of elevation reduces, this would result in an increase in rain attenuation. However, the above clarification may be seen for elevation angles above 50° elevation.