Integrated water vapor estimation through microwave propagation measurements: First experiment on a ground-to-ground radio link

The estimation of water vapor (WV) content in the lowest part of the troposphere is a critical issue which, up to now, cannot be obtained from space measurements with sufficient accuracy. A new technique, which is based on Ku-K band microwave measurements of the differential attenuation of two signals transmitted at closely spaced frequencies, has been recently proposed. In order to prove the effectiveness of this technique a prototype instrumentation was designed and tested on a ground-to-ground link