Comparison of tropospheric scintillation prediction models of the Indonesian climate

Abstract

Tropospheric scintillation is a phenomenon that will cause signal degradation in satellite communication with low fade margin. Few studies of scintillation have been conducted in tropical regions. To analyze tropospheric scintillation, we obtain data from a satellite link installed at Bandung, Indonesia, at an elevation angle of 64.7° and a frequency of 12.247 GHz from 1999 to 2000. The data are processed and compared with the predictions of several well-known scintillation prediction models. From the analysis, we found that the ITU-R model gives the lowest error rate when predicting the scintillation intensity for fade at 4.68%. However, the model should be further tested using data from higher-frequency bands, such as the K and Ka bands, to verify the accuracy of the model. © 2014 Chen and Singh; licensee Springer.