Experimental Model of Rainfall Rate Estimation Through the Opportunistic use of Q/V-band Satellite Links

This paper addresses the opportunistic use of satellite downlink attenuation measurements for the site-specific estimation of rainfall rate. In particular, the paper proposes a regression model characterized by: 1) the introduction of correction elements extracted from the frequency-domain analysis of the attenuation time series; 2) the use of a simple linear regression function with a small modifi cation which allows to use a negative intercept with the goal of minimizing the maximum error (large underestimation/overestimation). The performance, assessed using attenuation measurements of a satellite downlink in Q/V band shows that the proposed model allows to estimate the rainfall rate with low average error and low maximum error with respect to a more standard ITU model so as to offer more reliable estimations.