Evaluation of 1-Minute Integration Time Rain Rate Statistics in Ecuador for Radio Propagation Applications

In this letter, rain rate measurements performed in Ecuador are used to evaluate the performance of prediction models for estimating complementary cumulative distributions (CCDs) of rainfall rate at 1-minute integration time, which are required, for example, for rain attenuation estimation in wireless communication systems operating at frequencies above 10 GHz. Additionally, the aforementioned measurements are utilized in order to analyze the interannual variability of the rain rate, useful for the assessment of the reliability of the CCDs in terms of communication system availability. It was observed that overall the Recommendation ITU-R P.837-7 Annex 1 exhibited the best performance in estimating equivalent 1-minute integration time rain rate statistics. Furthermore, it was found that the lowest level of inter-annual variability of the rainfall rate was observed in the western zone adjacent to the Andes Cordillera of Ecuador.