Investigation of the Seasonal Impact of Diversity Gain and Improvement Factor toward Signal Availability in a Tropical Location

AbstractA satellite communication signal suffers from attenuation due to rain and this offers many problems in an effective signal transfer and quality thereby affecting satellite communication services needed for day- to-day activities. This study has adopted a fade mitigation technique called site and path diversity because it creates an effective pathway for signal availability at the receiver through the selection of a less attenuated signal. Synthetic Storm Technique (SST) time series rain attenuation model was used to calculate the diversity gain through a time series rain rate data for nine locations between 2008 and 2018 covering the Southwestern region of Nigeria which is a typical tropical location. Also, seasonal variation in rainfall patterns for pre-monsoon, intensive, cessation, and dry seasons and the site separation impact on the diversity gain and improvement factor has been investigated. The experimental diversity gain was compared with the ITU-R and Hodge models, the results show a high grade of disagreement between the experimental and the ITU-R, and Hodge models. A new model has been developed in this study through a linear curve fitting technique with a better correlation which performed better than the IT-R and Hodge model. Also, ITU-R improvement factor results showed that signal availability could be improved through site and path diversity fade mitigation. The obtained results in this study will offer an improvement in the Quality of Service (QoS) of satellite communication systems during intense rainy conditions.