Experimental analysis and comparison of tropospheric scintillation prediction models using eutelsat-36b satellite in a tropical Nigeria

Knowledge on clear-air effects is of paramount importance to proper link budgeting for optimum communication systems design performances. In this paper, one-year (January - December 2013) tropospheric scintillation data are extracted from the EUTELSAT-36B Ku-band satellite measurements installed at Akure (Lat: 7.17 oN, Long: 5.18 oE, Alt: 358 m) for statistical analysis and the result compared with some established troposphere scintillation models in order to obtain the best prediction model performance for this region. The result shows that even in the absence of rain, tropospheric scintillation shows a strong seasonal effect in this region up to amplitude above 0.92 dB. The scintillation intensity fits better to gamma distribution at a high scintillation level taken into consideration the local meteorological parameters. Models comparison with experimental data also shows that the Karasawa model with the lowest percentage error of about 7% was found to be best fit for predicting propagation impairment relating to be fading at a Ku band frequency in this region. The overall results will provide information on scintillation margin needed for sizing antennas and amplifiers for reliable performance and the average bit-error probability on a scintillation-degraded digital satellite link in this region.