Statistical Evaluation of Measured Rain Attenuation in Tropical Climate and Comparison with Prediction Models

Abstract Substantial modifications have been made to the expressions for calculating distance factor and extrapolation techniques in the latest ITU-R P.530-14. However, its performance has not been rigorously evaluated in the tropical and equatorial climates. In this article, the new ITU-R method and three prediction models are validated using measurement data from tropical Malaysian climate. The data were collected on six geographically spread terrestrial microwave DIGI MINI-LINKs operating at 15 GHz. When tested against measurements, the Da Silva Mello model yields a significant improvement for the prediction of rain attenuation distributions. The prediction errors observed in the ITU-R model suggest the need for more data campaign in the afore-mentioned climates.