Abstract
In this work, measured subtropical rain attenuation was compared with rain attenuation generated theoretically by the Synthetic Storm Technique (SST). The rain attenuation data was obtained from a Ku-band satellite TV link collocated at the site of a rain rate measurement system in Durban, South Africa (2887S, 3098E). A mathematical model developed from the measurement campaign was used to generate measured data for four years of rainfall. Annual cumulative distribution functions of SST prediction results are compared with the results of the measurement-based model. The results show SST to be a fair approximation of actual measurements. This was established by error analysis carried out to compare the error margins in SST prediction and the error margins in the in-force ITU-R prediction method. While the SST approach was shown to conform slightly less accurately to measurements than the ITU-R model, it still yields highly acceptable results in the 0 to 11 dB margin in which the said link experiences most of the measured attenuation before total channel squelching occurs.