The millimeter-wave band suffers strong attenuation due to rain. While calculating the link budget for a wireless system using this frequency band, the behavior of rain, attenuation due to rain, and the amount of degradation must be accurately understood. This paper presents an evaluation of the influence of rain and its attenuation on link performance in a Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) millimeter-wave model mesh network. Conventional statistical analyses including cumulative rain rate distribution and specific rain attenuation constants are performed on data collected from 2009 onwards. The unique effects arising due to the highly localized behaviors of strong rainfalls have become clear and are characterized in terms of variograms rather than correlation coefficients. Spatial separation even in the small network here with links of less than 1 km provides effective diversity branches for better availability performance.

Dense millimeter-wave networks are a promising candidate for next-generation cellular systems enabling multiple gigabit-per-second data rates. A major disadvantage of millimeter-wave systems is signal disruption by rain, and here we propose a novel method for rain sensing using dual-frequency measurements at 25 and 38GHz from a small-scale Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) millimeter-wave network. A real-time algorithm is developed for estimating the rain rate from attenuation using both ITU-R relationships and new coefficients that consider the effects of the rain Drop Size Distribution (DSD). The suggested procedure is tested on measured data, and its performance is evaluated. The results show that the proposed algorithm yields estimates that agree very well with rain gauge data.