Assessment of Total Attenuation and Adaptive Scheme for Quality of Service Enhancement in Tropical Weather for Satellite Networks and 5G Applications in Nigeria

Abstract The dynamic weather condition is a major concern for optimum channel utilization in recent times, especially at higher frequencies with larger bandwidth for 5G applications. Over the years, rain-induced attenuation among the hydrometeors has been linked as the major cause of signal impairment especially at the frequency, f ≥ 10 GHz. However, when f > 18 GHz, the significant impact of other hydrometeors; cloud/fog, and scintillation increases tremendously, especially for Low Earth Orbit, LEO satellites. LEO satellites find applications in fibre optics technology, scientific research, remote sensing, surveillance, meteorology, satellite imaging, and other applications. In this paper, the assessment of combined impairments based on 5-year (2012-2016) data has been carried out and a dynamic adaptive intelligent scheme (DAIS) has been adopted to achieve a good quality of service along the satellite channels operating at Ku-V band frequencies over five stations representing different climatic regions in Nigeria namely: Port Harcourt (PH), Akure, Ilorin, Zaria, and Kano. The proposed DAIS based on fuzzy logic was able to achieve a significant reduction in the transmitting power by about 70% and SNR by 50% across the frequencies considered without altering the information content of the downlink parameters, thereby improving the QoS significantly and adhere to Customer Service Level Agreements (CSLAs) irrespective of the weather dynamics. The overall results show that the adaptive intelligent techniques can effectively fix signal links under the dynamic weather conditions for both satellite and wireless networks in this region. Information from the results is timely because it will serve as the bedrock for the newly launched transformation to the digital video broadcasting (DVB) system in Nigeria for effective service delivery.