Path diversity for earth‐space communication links

This paper contains the results of a radar study of path diversity performance on simulated earth-space communication links in the presence of rainfall. The McGiIl University 3 GHz radar was used to obtain three-dimensional fields of radar reflectivity. The radar reflectivities measured at resolution cells along the propagation paths of interest were converted to specific attenuation and these values of specific attenuation were then summed to yield the total path attenuation. This procedure was repeated along parallel earth-space paths to yield the path diversity performance. The results for the Montreal area indicate that path diversity performance is mildly dependent upon the orientation of the propagation path and weakly dependent upon the baseline orientation of the ground diversity terminals.