Site Diversity Provision at 20.7 GHz

The use of EHF and SHF systems operating above 20 GHz is becoming increasingly popular for high-capacity communication systems. This popularity is driven by a number of factors, the most common being the congestion at lower-frequency bands and the potentially high capacities available. One of the main disadvantages of using these higher frequencies is that the attenuation caused by meteorological effects can become large. Attenuation caused by clouds, rain and atmospheric gases become very large. The largest attenuation events are caused by rain and clouds with a high liquid water-content. In order to provide high-availability links it is possible to use site diversity, by providing two spatially independent terminals. The spatial separation of the terminals reduces the probability of both terminals being faded.