Development of a Propagation Model for the Design of Low Availability Satellite Communication Systems

In this paper the radiosonde meteorological data collected in various European locations, representing different climatic regions, have been used as input to the propagation models in order to describe the statistical correlation between meteo parameters and propagation effects. Special attention has been given to the attenuation, phase delay and sky noise temnperatture due to water vapour, oxygen and clouds. Emlploying this statistical description, a probabilistic model able to represent the prolpgation behaviour of the lower atmosphere over a wide range of frequencies, has been developed and the corresponding results are presented. An example of the utilization of propagation parameters in a radio link budget calcution is discussed.