Abstract
Electromagnetic wave propagation suffers attenuation and phase rotation by suspended dust particles where occurrence of sand and dust storms (SDS) is predominant especially in arid and semi-arid regions. The SDS phenomenon has received considerable interest in recent times with emphasis on signal attenuation and phase rotation effects. To this end, mathematical models of dust induced complex scattering are developed and proposed using Rayleigh method to compute attenuation and phase rotation of electromagnetic waves by considering dust particle shapes and best fit ellipsoids. This work also presents a new expression for the relation between visibility and dust concentration. The expression was included in the proposed models whose simulated results, when compared with some published results, show close agreement. Attenuation and phase rotation in dry dust are found to be significant only when visibility becomes severe or at increased microwave bands.