Investigation of Rainfall Effect on Forested Radio Wave Propagation

In this paper, the rainfall is found to have distinct effect on various parts of the propagating components for the VHF radio wave propagation in a tropical forest. By the studies of the measured power delay profiles under different weather conditions, it is observed that the lateral wave is the dominant mode of the VHF propagation and is not affected by the presence of rain as it is similar to free space propagation over the tree tops, while the significant multipath components which propagate through the forest medium is heavily influenced. This is again verified through the estimated delay spread statistics.