What is "Rain Fade"?

Rain fade

In satellite communications, rain fade refers to the absorption of a microwave Radio Frequency (RF) signal by rain or snow, and is especially prevalent in frequencies above 11 GHz. It also refers to the degradation of a signal caused by the electromagnetic interference of the leading edge of a storm front. Rain fade can be caused by rain or snow at the uplink or downlink location. It does not need to be raining at a location for it to be affected by rain fade. The signal may pass through rain or snow many miles away, especially if the satellite dish has a low look angle.

Possible ways to overcome rain fade are site diversity, uplink power control, variable rate encoding and receiving antennas larger than the requested size for normal weather conditions.


This article is licensed under the GFDL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html). It uses material from the
Wikipedia article "Rain fade"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_fade)

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