Extension of existing models for evaluating site diversity performance for rain fade mitigation

Site diversity is an important means of improving availability for Earth‐space systems with low propagation margins. Current site diversity models, such as the ITU‐R model, are empirically derived from diversity gain measurements. This paper presents an improved site diversity model that allows for unbalanced margins between each site, longer baseline distances, and the direct incorporation of local statistics through the statistical parameters of a two‐component model.