Rain Attenuation Prediction for Terrestrial Microwave Link in Bangladesh

Abstract: Rain attenuation is a major shortcoming of microwave transmission. As a subtropical country, Bangladesh is one of the highest rainy areas of the world. Thus, designing a terrestrial microwave link is a serious challenge to the engineers. In this paper, the annual rain rate and monthly variation of rate are predicted for different percentage of time of the year from the measured rainfall data. Using ITU rain model for terrestrial microwave communication, the rain attenuation is predicted for five major cities of Bangladesh, namely Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Sylhet, and Khulna. It is found that rain attenuation is the most severe in Sylhet and least in Rajshahi. The attenuation is estimated for different frequency and polarization. A horizontally polarized signal encounters 15% more rain attenuation than that of vertically polarized signal. It is also found that attenuation in Rajshahi is about 20% lesser than that in Sylhet. Thus, the horizontally polarized transmission in Rajshahi experiences about 5% less attenuation than the vertically polarized transmission in Sylhet.