Combining the Effects of Rain-Induced Attenuation and Depolarization in Digital Satellite Systems

Rain depolarization causes crosstalk on a dual polarization communications link. The effects of depolarization can be expressed as a degradation of the carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) which can then be combined with the rain-induced attenuation to yield an effective attenuation. The effective attenuation is computed for a hypothetical satellite link at 11, 14, 20, and 30 GHz. It is shown that at 20/ 30 GHz the increase in system margin required by dual polarized use is small.