Evaluation of Rain Rate Integration Time Conversion Models for Attenuation Prediction

The estimation of atmospheric attenuation due to rain normally requires statistics of the rainfall rate measured with an integration time of 1 minute which is only available in a few locations. However, there are models for obtaining these statistics from available rain data measured with an integration time of up to 30 minutes or more. In this paper, these models are preliminary evaluated using two years of a rainfall rate data-base collected almost uninterruptedly over 8 years. The lTV-R P.618-14 attenuation model is applied using rain rate statistics measured with a 1-minute integration time and, also, estimates from various rain rate integration time conversion models. The results are compared with Ka and Q band beacon measured attenuation statistics for the same period and the errors of the predictions are, as well, estimated.