IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO.
9, SEPTEMBER 2012
On the Earth-Space Site Diversity Modeling: A Novel
Physical-Mathematical Outage Prediction Model
Charilaos I. Kourogiorgas, Student Member, IEEE, Athanasios D. Panagopoulos, Senior Member, IEEE, and
John D. Kanellopoulos, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A novel model based on the bivariate inverse
Gaussian (IG) distribution is presented for the prediction of the
outage performance of a dual site diversity Earth-space system. In
the present paper, the exceeded rain attenuation induced on each
Earth-space path is assumed that follows the IG distribution. The
joint rain attenuation exceedance probability is calculated using
the long-term statistical parameters of rain attenuation on each
individual slant path and adopting a spatial correlation coefficient
of rain attenuation variables as a function of the separation dis-
tance of the two Earth-stations. The Earth-Space path Database
of Study Group 3 (DBSG3) of International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) is employed in order to compare the performance
of the new method with the ITU-R P.618-10 outage model. The
numerical results from the comparison tests are very encouraging.
Index Terms—Fade mitigation techniques, radio propagation,
rain attenuation, site diversity.
I. INTRODUCTION
M ODERN satellite communication systems operate at Ka
and Q/V frequency bands in order to overcome the prob-
lems of spectrum congestion and to satisfy the high data rate
demanding services. Tropospheric phenomena affect the prop-
agated electromagnetic waves and result in the degradation of
the quality of the link, for operating frequency above 10 GHz
[1]. Among the tropospheric phenomena rainfall is the most se-
vere cause of attenuation of the signal and is the one that shows
the most significant spatial inhomogeneity. Therefore, in order
to use higher frequencies fade mitigation techniques (FMTs) are
employed to deal with the rain attenuation fading [2].
FMTs can be divided into three main categories [2]: Effective
isotropic radiated power (EIRP) control techniques, adaptive
transmission (adaptive modulation, adaptive coding and data
rate reduction) techniques and the diversity techniques. Site di-
versity reception is the most efficient FMT from a technical per-
spective view but unfortunately it is cost ineffective since it re-
quires at least two Earth stations installations along with a ter-
restrial connection [3].
Manuscript received December 05, 2011; revised February 01, 2012;
accepted March 26, 2012. Date of publication July 11, 2012; date of current
version August 30, 2012. This work was carried out under the framework of
COST IC0802 and was supported by the NTUA THALES-MIMOSA project
funded by EU and GSRT.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
National Technical University of Athens, Athens GR-15780, Greece (e-mail:
thpanag@ece.ntua.gr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2207073
0018-926X/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
4391
In the SD reception technique two or more base stations are
communicating with the satellite and the Earth-space path with
the least attenuation is selected, resulting to a selection com-
bining scheme [4]. SD actually takes advantage of the decor-
relation of rainfall rate with the distance between the two radio
paths and so the fact that the probability of simultaneous rain at-
tenuation occurring on two or more network routes is less than
the probability of rain attenuation occurring on each individual
path.
The models for the prediction of the SD performance can be
classified into two categories: the empirical prediction models
and the physical-mathematical models. Two empirical methods
for predicting the diversity gain are described in [5], [6]. The
model of Hodge [6] has been adopted by ITU in the recommen-
dation ITU-R. P. 618-10 [7] for the calculation of site diver-
sity gain (Section 2.2.4.2 of ITU R. P.618-10). Physical models
that predict the joint exceedance probability of rain attenuation
have been developed in [7]–[13]. The models that have been
presented in references [7]–[11] assume that the rain attenua-
tion on slant paths follow bivariate (for dual diversity scheme)
or multivariate lognormal distribution. The ITU-R P. 618 model
(in Section 2.2.4.1) [7] for the prediction of the outage proba-
bility due to rain attenuation with site diversity has been adopted
by ITU-R very recently. The difference between the models of
Section 2.2.4.1 and Section 2.2.4.2 of the ITU-R. P. 618-10 Rec-
ommendation is that the first one refers to the joint exceedance
probability of rain attenuation for dual site systems, while the
second one is used in order to compute the site diversity gain
using an empirical algorithm. Furthermore, the diversity gain
computed by the model of Section 2.2.4.2 has the limitation that
the baseline length of the two Earth stations must be less than
20 km.
In this paper a novel model for predicting the joint ex-
ceedance probability of rain attenuation for a dual site diversity
system is presented using the single and the bivariate inverse
Gaussian (IG) distribution [14]. The general unbalanced di-
versity configuration is considered since different statistical
inputs for the single slant path distributions are used. The
IG distribution has been previously reported for the descrip-
tion of shadowing phenomena [15] and turbulence-induced
phenomena in free-space optical systems operating in weak
turbulence conditions [16]. Also, in [17], the IG distribution is
used for modeling the conditional distribution of rain rate for
meteorological applications, due to the fact that IG distribution
is a skewed distribution. For the above reasons we have been
motivated to use the bivariate IG for the prediction of joint
exceedance rain attenuation statistics.
4392 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012

The proposed model is described in Section II. In Section III and is the correlation coefficient between the random variables
the DBSG3 [18] will be used in order to test the new model and and .
the results will be compared against the ITU-R. P. 618 phys- The joint CDF of the two variables and is given [19],
ical-mathematical model (in Section 2.2.4.1) [7]. The model in [20]:
the paragraph Section 2.2.4.1 of ITU-R. P. 618-10 Recommen-
dation has been tested inside ITU-R Study Group 3 with many
other models from the literature. Due to its good and reliable (6)
performance on the experimental data, it has been selected by
ITU-R and inserted in the ITU-R P.618-10 Recommendation. where
Finally, conclusions derived from this paper will be referred in
final Section IV.

II. SITE DIVERSITY OUTAGE PREDICTION MODEL

In this Section the new model is presented. In the first subsec-
tion the univariate and the bivariate IG distribution are given. (7)
In the second subsection, we discuss the assumption that the
single-site rain attenuation exceedance probability can be cal-
with is the Gaussian Q-function and is related to the com-
culated using IG distribution and in the last part the predic-
plementary error function with:
tion model for the calculation of joint exceedance probability
is given.
(8)
A. Inverse Gaussian Distribution and
The univariate probability density function (PDF) of the IG
distribution is [19], [20]:

(9)
(1)

where is the mean value of the random variable and is

the scale parameter of the IG distribution, both greater than zero
.
The cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the IG distri-
bution is given in (2) and the complementary CDF in (3):
B. Single Slant Path Rain Attenuation Modeling
Here we assume that the unconditional single-site rain atten-
uation can be modeled with IG distribution. So the rain attenua-
tion exceedance probability of a rain attenuation threshold
(dB) from (3) is given:

(2)

(3) (10)

Assuming that two variables and which are greater The term unconditional that is used, means that there is no
than zero each of them follows the IG distribution with pa- separation between rainy and non-rainy periods for modeling
rameters and , and PDFs and , the rain attenuation distribution. The use of the unconditional
respectively, the bivariate PDF is constructed as follows [19], CCDF for rain attenuation modeling overcomes the problem of
[20]: the knowledge of probability of the existence of rain attenuation
. However, the probability of rain, that means that
rainfall rate is greater than zero can be de-
(4) rived for every location of the world using the ITU-R rainmaps
P. 837-5 [21]. This does not take into account the year varia-
with tions of the probability to rain in a single point. The value of
can also be used for the rain attenuation case with precau-
tion. An expression that relates the value with the probability
that rain attenuation exceeds zero dB value along
the slant path is needed. Summing up, using the unconditional
complementary cumulative density function the value and
(5)
the relationship between and are not required.
KOUROGIORGAS et al.: ON THE EARTH-SPACE SITE DIVERSITY MODELING: A NOVEL PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICAL OUTAGE PREDICTION MODEL 4393

good. However, the relative error between the fitted values of

the CCDF of IG distribution and the experimental exceedance
probability was computed for both figures. The mean value, the
standard deviation and the rms value of the error are %,
13.75%, 13.87%, respectively, for the first figure and %,
13.4%, 13.54% for the second figure. Lognormal [10] and
Weibull [5] distributions [22] have also very good behavior in
single-site rain attenuation data. A comparative test of them
with IG distribution on an experimental database is out of scope
of this manuscript.
As it was previously referred, the parameters of the IG
exceedance probability must be greater than 0. Therefore, a
nonlinear least-squares fitting problem subject to bounds is
solved to compute the statistical parameters of the IG distribu-
tion. The trust-region-reflecting algorithm was used for solving
the problem based on the interior-reflective Gauss-Newton
Fig. 1. CCDF of rain attenuation for Bangkok, Thailand with GHz method as this is described in [23], [24]. Then, using the
and curve from ITU-R. P. 618 (o) and the IG fitted curve (solid line)
with parameters dB and dB.
preconditioned conjugate method the normal equations of the
Gauss-Newton method are solved. As, the parameters of the
CCDF of IG distribution must be greater than zero the bounds
were selected dB and 100 dB for both the parameters.
The lower bound is close to zero dB and much smaller than the
expected values of the parameters. The upper bound is much
greater than the expected values of the parameters and can
approximate for our case the infinite. The algorithm which is
used has been already adopted from Matlab software [25].

C. Outage Prediction Model

Our objective is to calculate the joint exceedance probability
of a dual unbalanced site diversity scheme which is defined:

(11)

That means that we have to calculate:

Fig. 2. CCDF of rain attenuation for La Conception, Canada for GHz (12)
and with curve from DBSG3 database (o) and the IG distribution (solid
line) with parameters dB and dB.
where is the bivariate IG distribution (see ex-
pressions (4) and (5)). From [22] we have an expression that
The unconditional IG CCDF of rain attenuation approximates gives the joint exceedance probability (CCDF) in term of the
very well the rain attenuation distribution for probability levels joint CDF and the single CDFs:
less than 1%. So the ‘tail’ of a given rain distribution can be
modeled very well with IG model. Two examples are given here
in Figs. 1 and 2. In both figures the parameters and of the
CCDF of IG rain attenuation distribution (10) were computed
(13)
through a non linear regression fitting process with data points
of rain attenuation. Data derived from ITU-R. P. 618-10 for the As far as the correlation coefficient is concerned, we employ
city of Bangkok considering a link with operating frequency the Paraboni-Barbaliscia expression [11] that also has been used
equal to 20 GHz and elevation angle in Thailand in ITU-R physical-mathematical model [7]:
were used for the first Figure. Experimental data points from La
Conception in Canada from DBSG3 database with GHz (14)
and were used for Fig. 2. The computed parameters of
the IG distribution are dB and where is the baseline distance of the two Earth terminals in
dB for Fig. 1 and dB and dB km. If there are experimental data for the horizontal variation
for Fig. 2. of the rainfall medium for the specific region of the site diver-
From Figs. 1 and 2, it can be observed the fitting of rain sity system, the proposed model is flexible and the experimental
attenuation exceedance probability using IG distribution is very correlation coefficient is recommended for the model.
4394 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012
Fig. 3. Experimental data (+) and simulated (solid line) joint CCDF of rain
attenuation for two Earth stations with a distance 22.7 km, GHz and
located at La Conception and Vernet, in Canada.
Concluding our methodology, we can calculate the outage
probability of a dual site diversity scheme using the following
step-by-step procedure:
• Calculate the IG rain attenuation parameters for every
single slant path using either experimental data or by
fitting on the ITU-R P.618 prediction curve. Then we will
have and . two measures which are essential for the design of dual site
• Calculate the long-term rain attenuation correlation coeffi-
cient using expression (14) and
• Finally calculate the outage probability using the final
close formula derived from expressions (13), (2), (6), (7)
and (9).
Now we will present two characteristic comparison examples
of the proposed methodology with experimental data from the
ITU-R Databank.
In Figs. 3 and 4 the joint rain attenuation exceedance proba-
bility taken from DBSG3 database and calculated from the ex-
pressions (12)(14) are shown for two experiments. For Fig. 3
the first base station is located at La Conception in Canada and
the second one at Vernet in Canada. Their distance is 22.7 km
with GHz and . The parameters of the indi-
vidual CCDF of IG distributions are dB,
dB for the first slant path and dB,
dB for the second slant path at Vernet. For
the second figure, the two base stations are located in Austria at
Graz and Michelbachberg with their distance equal to 10.9 km.
The operating frequency of the link is 11.4 GHz and the eleva-
tion angle of both Earth stations is 33 . The parameters of the
two IG distributions are dB, dB,
and dB, dB respectively. The error
between the predicted values of the joint exceedance probability
and the measured values has been computed for both Figures.
For Fig. 3, the mean value, standard deviation and rms value of
the error are 1.27%, 4.79% and 4.95%, respectively, while for
Fig. 4 they are 7.06%, 4.38% and 8.31%.
The advantage in terms of rain attenuation by deploying a
dual site diversity system instead of a single-site system can be
expressed by the terms diversity gain and improvement factor.
Fig. 4. Experimental (+) and simulated (solid line) joint CCDF of rain
attenuation for two Earth stations with a distance 10.9 km, operating frequency
11.4 GHz and elevation angle 33 located at Graz and Michelbachberg, in
Austria.
The first one is the reduction of attenuation exceeded for
a given time percentage as this is shown in (15), [6], [12].
The improvement factor is the division of the single site
rain attenuation exceedance probability by the joint ex-
ceedance probability ( or equivalently the outage proba-
bility ) for a given attenuation level (16), [12]. These
Earth-space systems can be calculated from the proposed model.
(15)
where is the single-site rain attenuation exceeded for
percentage of time and is the joint rain attenuation
exceeded for percentage of time and
(16)
III. VALIDATION AND COMPARATIVE TEST OF THE MODEL
In this section, the proposed model will be validated with the
Earth-space path experimental database of ITU-R, Study Group
3, DBSG3. The experimental joint rain attenuation exceedance
probability will be compared with the resulted one from the new
model using bivariate IG distribution. The error will be com-
puted for all the experiments for two cases: first, for every time
percentage and second, for all time percentages. For the first
case the mean value, standard deviation and rms value of the
error were computed for every time percentage considering all
the experiments, while for the second case the statistical param-
eters of the error were computed considering all the errors for all
data points, i.e., all time percentages and all experiments. The
error is computed according to ITU-R. P. 311-13 error criterion
[26]:
(17)
KOUROGIORGAS et al.: ON THE EARTH-SPACE SITE DIVERSITY MODELING: A NOVEL PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICAL OUTAGE PREDICTION MODEL 4395

Fig. 6. Standard deviation of the error (%) for every time percentage for the
Fig. 5. Mean value of the error (%) for every time percentage for the proposed proposed model (o) and ITU-R. P. 618 (+).
model (o) and ITU-R. P. 618 (+).

where is the error for the experiment at level of per-

centage, is the measured joint rain attenuation at ex-
periment at time percentage and the predicted rain
attenuation. For the computation of the mean value, standard
deviation and rms value of the error, the errors are weighted
according to the duration of the experiment as this is noted in
[26]. The error for the same experiments will be computed ac-
cording to the error criterion of ITU-R. P.311 for the predicted
values using ITU-R. P. 618-10 (in Section 2.2.4.1) [7], in order
to compare the results of the proposed model against the ITU-R
Recommendation.
The inputs for the new model are the parameters and
of the individual exceedance probabilities for every
Earth-space path (calculated from the experimental curve) and
the baseline distance between the two base stations. For ITU-R. Fig. 7. RMS value of the error (%) for every time percentage for the proposed
P. 618-10 model apart from the parameters of the lognormal model (o) and ITU-R. P. 618 (+).
fitting to the individual experimental CCDF of rain attenuation
and the distance between the two base stations, the probability
TABLE I
of rain for the two regions where the Earth stations are located MEAN, STANDARD DEVIATION AND RMS ERROR (%) FOR THE PROPOSED
is required. The latter vales are obtained from ITU-R. P.837-5 MODEL AND ITU-R. P. 618 FOR DBSG3 DATABASE
[21].
The presenting error was computed using 44 experiments
from Earth-space path DBSG3 database for the time percent-
ages that available data exist. These experiments were chosen
for two reasons. First, they are the only experiments of the data-
base which include all the required data to validate the proposed
model and compare it to the ITU-R. P. 618. Second, they in-
clude a sufficient number (greater than four) of experimental 6 and the maximum 83 . The separation distance between the
data points for the single-site induced rain attenuation, in order two base stations varies from 1.7 km to 213 km.
to obtain accurate results from the nonlinear regression fitting The mean , the standard deviation and the rms
process of IG (for the proposed model) and lognormal distribu- value of the error were computed for every time per-
tion (for ITU-R. P. 618) to the single-site rain attenuation ex- centage and for all time percentages for all the experiments. In
perimental data points. The required data are the latitude, longi- Figs. 5–7 the mean value, the standard deviation and the rms
tude, the baseline length and single-site rain attenuation of the value of the error for every time percentage for all the experi-
two Earth stations and the joint rain attenuation. Most of the ments are shown. In Table I the same statistical parameters of the
experiments took place in moderate climates and only one in error are shown for all time percentages for all the experiments.
Brazil at Latitude , the operating frequency of the links is It is observed from Fig. 5 that the mean error of the proposed
between 11.4 GHz and 30 GHz, the minimum elevation angle is model is much less comparing to the one from ITU-R P.618
4396 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012
recommendation for almost all time percentages. It is obvious
that the new model behaves better in terms of mean error for
every time percentage and for the overall error, as this is shown
in Table I. The mean error of the proposed model is % 2009.
and for ITU-R. P.618 is %.
As for the standard deviation, it is observed that ITU-R.
P.618 model behave better in almost every time percentage (see
Fig. 6). However, in overall the proposed model is statistically
slightly more stable than ITU-R. P. 618 as from Table I the
standard deviation of the error of the proposed model is 29.19%
and for ITU-R P.618 30.25%. Furthermore, the performance of
a model is evaluated via the rms value of the error. From Fig. 7
it can be referred that the proposed model has a lower rms
error than ITU-R. P. 618 for every time percentage apart from
0.001%–0.003% time percentages. The overall rms error for
the proposed model is 29.2% and for the recommendation of
ITU 34.37%, as this is shown in Table I. Therefore, the overall
performance of the proposed model is better comparing to the
ITU-R. P. 618. We can conclude that the prediction made by the
new model based on bivariate IG distribution is accurate and
closer to the experimental data than the prediction of ITU-R.
P. 618.
IV. CONCLUSION
A new simple method was presented for computing the
outage probability of rain attenuation for dual site diversity
systems. This method is a novel mathematical approach based
on the bivariate Inverse Gaussian distribution. The main as-
sumptions are rain attenuation on each individual path of the
diversity system follows the Inverse Gaussian distribution and
a well-accepted correlation coefficient is employed. Using this
method the balanced and the unbalanced joint exceedance prob-
ability of rain attenuation can be calculated. The performance
of the proposed model was validated using DBSG3 database
and compared to the ITU-R. P. 618 model. Computing the error
of the two models, the behavior of the proposed method has
been shown to be better comparing to the one of ITU-R. P.618
model.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to all the Propagation Experts that
made the experiments that were included in the ITU-R Data-
bank.
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Charilaos I. Kourogiorgas (S’12) was born in
Athens, Greece, on July 6, 1985. He received the
Diploma Engineering in electrical and computer
engineering in 2009 from the National Technical
University of Athens (NTUA), Athens, where he is
currently working towards the Ph.D. degree.
From October 2009 to June 2011, he was with
Department of Electromagnetism and Radar, Office
National d’Études et Recherches Aérospatiales
(ONERA), Toulouse, France. He is participating in
COST Actions IC0802 and IC1004 and ESA funded
SATNEX III. His research interests are channel modeling for satellite and
terrestrial communication systems.
Mr. Kourogiorgas is a member of Technical Chamber of Greece.
KOUROGIORGAS et al.: ON THE EARTH-SPACE SITE DIVERSITY MODELING: A NOVEL PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICAL OUTAGE PREDICTION MODEL 4397

Athanasios D. Panagopoulos (S’98–M’02–SM’09) John D. Kanellopoulos (SM’90) was born in

was born in Athens, Greece, on January 26, 1975. Athens, Greece, on December 12, 1948. He received
He received the Diploma degree in electrical and the Diploma of Mechanical and Electrical Engi-
computer engineering (summa cum laude) and neering and the Dr.Eng. degree from the National
the Dr. Eng. degree from the National Technical Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens,
University of Athens (NTUA), Athens, in July 1997 Greece, in 1971 and 1979, respectively, and the
and in April 2002, respectively. D.I.C. and Ph.D. degrees from Imperial College of
From May 2002 to July 2003, he had served the Science, Technology and Medicine, University of
Technical Corps of Hellenic Army. From September London, U.K., in 1979.
2003 to December 2008, he worked as an Assistant In November 1979, he joined the Department of
Professor in the School of Pedagogical and Techno- Electrical Engineering, NTUA, where he is now a
logical Education. From January 2005 to May 2008, he was the Head of the Professor. He has authored and coauthored more than 250 papers in interna-
Wireless & Satellite Division of Hellenic Authority for Communication Secu- tional journals, transactions, and conference proceedings. His areas of interest
rity and Privacy. Since May 2008, he is Lecturer in School of Electrical and are microwave propagation through rain media, satellite communication sys-
Computer Engineering of NTUA. He has authored and coauthored more than tems, nonlinear optics, rough surface scattering, and waveguide propagation.
85 papers in international journals, transactions and more than 110 paper confer-
ence proceedings and 10 book chapters in international books. His research in-
terests include radio communication systems design, wireless and satellite com-
munications networks and the propagation effects on multiple access systems
and on communication protocols.
Dr. Panagopoulos is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece and also
regularly participates in ITU-R Study Group 3 as a Greek Delegate. He is the
recipient of URSI General Assembly Young Scientist Award in 2002 and 2005,
respectively. He is Vice Chairman of Greek IEEE Communication Chapter.
He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION and in IEEE Communication Letters.