Details of plans to make site diversity measurements using STENTOR

The beacons on board STENTOR represent a major opportunity to increase the knowledge base of propagation and tropospheric attenuation measurements at Ka and V bands; this is an area that is rapidly increasing in importance. The UK Government´s Communications White Paper, published in December 2000, clearly sates the need for broadband wireless access to be freely available throughout the country, an aim that will only be achieved through the use of slant path and/or terrestrial paths. With the ITALSAT measurements (which were started in 1995) and the possibility of recording data from STENTOR until beyond 2005, we would have a continuous run of slant path observations over ten years. Not only does this represent a significant increase in the amount of data available with which to test propagation models; it also is a long enough time period with which to study the variability of attenuation statistics from year to year. The site diversity part of the experiment should serve to answer difficult questions about whether or not it would be economically feasible to improve channel availability through the building of a number of smaller, cheaper base stations, rather than one large base station