Variability of slant path attenuation statistics in the mid-Atlantic coast region of the United States at Ka band

Two major questions are investigated. What are the variabilities of rain rate distributions over short geographic scales for a mid-atlantic coast region of the United States? What ar the corresponding slant path attenuation statistics at the Ka-band frequency. These questions are important from the point of view of assessing the reliability of estimated fade statistics and corresponding projected outages for Earth-satellite communications for both short term and longer term bases. The above questions were investigated by analyzing the rain rates derived from nine raingauges comprising a raingauge network within a region of extent 70 km north-south and 47 km east-west. The rain rate distributions were interfaced with a slant path prediction model which was tested by comparing with a fade distribution at 28.56 GHz derived from measurements over a three year period at one of the raingauge site locations. Two years of rain rate data were analyzed