Ricerc@Sapienza

Radio communications, and in particular Earth-to-satellite
links, are worldwide used for delivering digital services.
The bandwidth demand of such services is increasing
accordingly to the advent of more advanced applications
(e.g., multimedia services, deep-space explorations, etc.)
thus pushing the scientific community toward the
investigation of channel carriers at higher frequencies.
When using carrier frequencies above X band, the main
drawback is how to tackle the impact of tropospheric
processes (i.e., rain, cloud, water vapor). This work
assesses the joint use of weather forecast models, radiative
transfer models and Sun-tracking radiometric
measurements to explore their potential benefits in
predicting path attenuation and sky noise temperature for
slant paths at frequencies between K and W band, thus
paving the way to the optimization of satellite link-budgets.