Characterization of Rainfall Structure and Attenuation Over Two Tropical Stations in Southwestern, Nigeria for the Evaluation of Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Communication Links

Characterization of rainfall structure and attenuation are some of the steps to be considered when analyzing microwave propagation. In this paper, 2-year rainfall data of 1-minute integration time obtained from the Nigerian Environmental Climatic Observatory Program (NECOP), Pro-weather station, over two tropical locations in southwestern Nigeria were analyzed for radiowave communication purposes. The results obtained were compared with existing rain rate models to characterize the rainfall structure. Rainfall attenuation over the terrestrial paths in the two regions was also investigated for the path-length not exceeding 20 km using three different rainfall attenuation models namely: ITU-R, Moupfouma and Crane Global model. Overall results obtained from this study will assist radio communication engineers to design systems with an improved quality service for terrestrial and Earth-space communication links in the region.Keyword: Rainfall structure, rainfall-induced attenuation, year-wise variability, NECOP and microwave propagation