This paper presents an
example of the usage of ensemble weather forecasting for the control of
satellite-based communication systems. Satellite communication systems become
increasingly sensitive to weather conditions as their operating frequency
increases to avoid electromagnetic spectrum congestion and enhance their
capacity. In the microwave domain, electromagnetic waves that are conveying
information are attenuated between the satellite and Earth terminals in the
presence of hydrometeors (mostly rain drops and more marginally cloud
droplets). To maintain a reasonable level of service availability, even with
adverse weather conditions considering the scarcity of amplification power in
spacecraft, fade mitigation techniques have been developed. The general idea
behind those fade mitigation techniques is to reroute, change the
characteristics or reschedule the transmission in the case of too-significant
propagation impairments. For some systems, a scheduling on how to use those
mechanisms some hours in advance is required, making assumptions on the
future weather conditions affecting the link. To this aim the use of weather
forecast data to control the attenuation compensation mechanisms seems of
particular interest to maximize the performances of the communication links
and hence of the associated economic value. A model to forecast the
attenuation on the link based on forecasted rainfall amounts from
deterministic or ensemble weather forecasting is presented and validated. In
a second phase, the model's application to a simplified telecommunication
system allows us to demonstrate the valuable contribution of weather
forecasting in the system's availability optimization or in the system's
throughput optimization. The benefit of using ensemble forecasts rather than
deterministic ones is demonstrated as well.</p
