A rain fading simulation model for broadband wireless access channels in millimeter wavebands

Rain fade is a very critical problem in designing broadband wireless access systems operating at frequencies above 20 GHz. How to keep the system working robustly in both clear and rainy weather has always been a big concern. A successful design of such systems is therefore highly dependent upon detailed knowledge about the propagation environments, especially about the influences of rainfall events. In this paper, a new rain fading simulation model for broadband wireless channels is presented. The model can generate time-correlated rain fading waveforms based on previous rain rate and rain attenuation measurement results. Such effects as multipath, path loss and rainfall rate variation are included into the simulation model. The amplitude of the generated waveforms is Rician distributed, with the K factor as a function of rain rate, which is in agreement with the previous measurement results