Path Attenuation Calculator for Rain Fade

Rain as a weather phenomenon is one of the things that greatly affects propagation of radio waves. Above 10 GHz, the attenuation brought about by the interaction of the propagating waves and the rain droplets becomes significant for both terrestrial radio links and satellite links. For this reason, rain attenuation models have been developed to aid in planning purposes for network implementation. The models use statistics to predict the attenuation that is caused by specific amount of rain and also the type of rain. This means that different regions will have different levels of attenuation due to the fact that they experience different types and amount of rain. A couple of models exist including the ITU-R, Moupfouma model, Crane attenuation model and other localized models depending on the geographical area that research data collection and extensive analysis has been conducted on and a comprehensive set of values and factors have been determined that can aid in estimation of attenuation due to rain. This paper seeks to provide a viable means by which a transmission engineer can be able to know the attenuation per kilometer due to the various models. This is achieved by designing a software calculator that provides the output of the attenuation per kilometer (dB/Km) while taking an input of rain rate for the different models available. The calculator is based on visual basic platform and works with forms.