Study of a rain attenuation space-time channel model for tropical and equatorial areas

This paper tackles some issues on the modelling of the propagation channel in space and in time at Ku band and above for tropical or equatorial areas. In those areas, that will account for a large fraction of the satellite communication market in the next years, propagation impairments trough the troposphere especially due to rain can reach extreme values and thus make indispensable the use of Fade Mitigation Techniques (FMT). In order to optimise those FMT´s, a statistical knowledge of the space-time evolution of the propagation channel is required to provide inputs to system simulators. The aim of this paper is to present improvements of a space time channel model previously developed for temperate areas, to better represent tropical and equatorial climates.