What is More Susceptible to Rain Outage, Vertical or Horizontal Radio Signals?
- June 20, 2012
- antenna polarization, Crane, Dick Laine, horizontal polarization, International Telecommunication Union, ITU-R, Microwave transmission, Radio Head Technology Series, Radio Heads, Radiohead, Rain Fade, vertical polarization
The world is divided into separate International Telecommunication Union regions. In many regions of the world, ITU methods of calculating rain outage are most commonly used. In other regions, such as North America, the Crane model is used more often. (Image credit: Wikipedia)
Ever wonder which antenna polarization is more susceptible to rain outage? Vertical? Horizontal? Which should you use for very long hops?
What would you do besides add extra fade margin to mitigate rain outage? Design a shorter path or use a lower frequency band?
Aviat Networks’ microwave radio guru, Principal Engineer Dick Laine, tackles these tricky questions and others in the latest episode of our Radio Head Technology Series of videos.
Dick also talks about rain outage—as calculated by ITU using a simple scientific calculator, or computer programs (Starlink) that use the Crane model. He goes through an ITU-R availability calculation in one example, noting specifically about rain attenuation calculation above and below 30 degrees latitude. Dick then proceeds into a deep dive on calculating outage when you know the fade margin, followed by a discussion on the Crane rain attenuation model.
Aviat Networks invites our readers to register to be added to our Radio Heads distribution list to get notified of new Radio Head Technology Series releases and links to replays.
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