Site Diversity Technique Application on Rain Attenuation for Lagos

Abstract

This paper studied the impact of site diversity (SD) as a fade mitigation technique on rain attenuation at 12 GHz for Lagos. SD is one of the most effective methods to overcome such large fades due to rain attenuation that takes advantage of the usually localized nature of intense rainfall by receiving the satellite downlink signal at two or more earth stations to minimize the prospect of potential diversity stations being simultaneously subjected to significant rain attenuation. One year (January to December 2011) hourly rain gauge data was sourced from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) for three sites (Ikeja, Ikorodu and Marina) in Lagos, Nigeria. Significant improvement in both performance and availability was observed with the application of SD technique; again, separation distance was seen to be responsible for this observed performance improvements.