Performance of Multiple-Site Diversity and Its Relationship with Time Diversity in Tropical Regions

Satellite communications rely on frequency bands higher than 10 GHz to operate and achieve larger capacities needed for modern multimedia services. These systems are subject to signal attenuation due to several atmospheric factors, including rain along the propagation path. Therefore, heavy rainfall tropical regions are affected by a potential increase of system outage probability. On the other side, Multiple-Site Diversity technique appears as a well-known countermeasure that could be applied to mitigate signal degradation in these particular cases. In this work, the performance of Site Diversity in tropical regions is statistically evaluated through simulations derived from the application of Satellite Synthetic Storm Technique (S-SST)to estimate attenuation along the satellite propagation path. The results show important improvements in terms of the reduction in the overall signal attenuation of the system. Finally, the Site Diversity is compared with Time Diversity, other important technique to mitigate satellite signal attenuation due to rain; as a result the storm velocity was assessed and validated.