A New Space‐ and Time‐Correlated Tropospheric Attenuation Timeseries Synthesizer Driven by Low‐Resolution Meteorological Information for Earth–Space Communication Systems

ABSTRACT Recommendation ITU‐R P.1853‐2 includes a stochastic approach to generate timeseries of total impairments that are correlated in time and space to support the design and operation of Satcom fade mitigation technique (FMT). Because it lacks any meteorological realism, it cannot reproduce realistic rainy/nonrainy periods or credible outage durations. We present a new modeling approach that combines meteorological data from the ERA5 reanalysis with stochastic components, preserving the required spatial–temporal correlations among several locations. The relative contribution of ERA5 and random terms is calibrated with high‐resolution WRF‐ARW simulations coupled to an electromagnetic module that converts 3D atmospheric information into microwave attenuation. With this hybrid model, ERA5 drives the slow dynamics while the stochastic part adds rapid fluctuations to the signal. Long‐term ITU‐R P. statistical models for rain, clouds, and water vapor transform normally distributed mixed processes into attenuation series; oxygen attenuation is computed directly from ERA5 variables, and scintillation is generated as in Rec. ITU‐R P.1853‐2. Model performance is assessed by comparing the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of many synthetic series with long‐term ITU‐R P. predictions, showing good agreement and revealing the climatic variance in the synthetic CCDF. Joint statistics are also evaluated against a new site‐diversity prediction model that can handle more than two locations. Finally, fade and interfade durations are analyzed, demonstrating that the proposed synthesizer produces more realistic and longer outage and nonoutage periods than the original model from Rec. ITU‐R P.1853‐2.