Rain attenuation on satellite communication links

• Main Author: Srikanth Mariyappa.
• Other Authors: Lee Yee Hui
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Satellite telecommunication
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53095
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Tropical countries like Singapore experience high rainfall rate all year round. As such it is essential to ensure that satellite links are kept reliable under these adverse conditions. Effects due to rain can greatly degrade the signal and link performance, especially under heavy rainfall condition. This project aims to study the effects of rain on satellite communication links. Prior to analysis of rain attenuation, other effects affecting the signal quality had to be removed. One of the effects to be considered was scintillation. Another key aspect to be considered was the Low-noise Block downconverter (LNB) gain variation. Effects of rainfall and temperature attenuation on the signal were also analysed. This analysis was performed with the aid of MATLAB which was used to process the data from the beacon receiver and the weather station. This report elaborates the methodology used in suppressing scintillation using appropriate filtering techniques and LNB gain variation on the received signal during post-processing. The results will show the optimum parameters to be used to achieve the project goals.