Millimeter-wave (30–300 GHz) frequency is a promising candidate for 5G and beyond wireless networks, but atmospheric elements limit radio links at this frequency band. Rainfall is the significant atmospheric element that causes attenuation in the propagated wave, which needs to estimate for the proper operation of fade mitigation technique (FMT). Many models have been proposed in the literature to estimate rain attenuation. Various models have a distinct set of input parameters along with separate estimation mechanisms. This survey has garnered multiple techniques that can generate input dataset for the rain attenuation models. This study extensively investigates the existing terrestrial rain attenuation models. There is no survey of terrestrial rain mitigation models to the best of our knowledge. In this article, the requirements of this survey are first discussed, with various dataset developing techniques. The terrestrial links models are classified, and subsequently, qualitative and quantitative analyses among these terrestrial rain attenuation models are tabulated. Also, a set of error performance evaluation techniques is introduced. Moreover, there is a discussion of open research problems and challenges, especially the exigency for developing a rain attenuation model for the short-ranged link in the E-band for 5G and beyond networks.

Satellite communication is a promising transmission technique to implement 5G and beyond networks. Attenuation due to rain begins at a frequency of 10 GHz in temperate regions. However, some research indicates that such attenuation effects start from 5–7 GHz, especially in tropical regions. Therefore, modeling rain attenuation is significant for propagating electromagnetic waves to achieve the required quality of service. In this survey, different slant link rain attenuation prediction models have been examined, classified, and analyzed, and various features like improvements, drawbacks, and particular aspects of these models have been tabulated. This survey provides various techniques for obtaining input data sets, including rain height, efficient trajectory length measurement techniques, and rainfall rate conversion procedures. No survey of the Earth–space link models for rain attenuation is available to the best of our knowledge. In this study, 23 rain attenuation models have been investigated. For easy readability and conciseness, the details of each model have not been included. The comparative analysis will assist in propagation modeling and planning the link budget of slant links.

The indoor application of wave propagation in the 5G network is essential to fulfill the increasing demands of network access in an indoor environment. This study investigated the wave propagation properties of line-of-sight (LOS) links at two long corridors of Chosun University (CU). We chose wave propagation measurements at 3.7 and 28 GHz, since 3.7 GHz is the closest to the roll-out frequency band of 3.5 GHz in South Korea and 28 GHz is next allocated frequency band for Korean telcos. In addition, 28 GHz is the promising millimeter band adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the 5G network. Thus, the 5G network can use 3.7 and 28 GHz frequencies to achieve the spectrum required for its roll-out frequency band. The results observed were applied to simulate the path loss of the LOS links at extended indoor corridor environments. The minimum mean square error (MMSE) approach was used to evaluate the distance and frequency-dependent optimized coefficients of the close-in (CI) model with a frequency-weighted path loss exponent (CIF), floating-intercept (FI), and alpha–beta–gamma (ABG) models. The outcome shows that the large-scale FI and CI models fitted the measured results at 3.7 and 28 GHz.

This paper describes a novel feed system for compact, wideband, high gain six-slot Vivaldi antenna arrays on a single substrate layer using a unique combination of power splitters based on binary T-junction power splitter topology, frequency-independent phase shifter, and a T-branch. The proposed antenna system consists of six Vivaldi antennas, three on the left, and three on the right arm. Each arm connects with T-junction power divider splitter topology, given that the right arm is linked through a frequency-independent phase shifter. Phase shifters ensure that the beam is symmetrical without splitting in a radiating plane so that highly directive radiation patterns occur. The optimal return losses (S-parameters) are well enriched by reforming Vivaldi’s feeding arms and optimizing Vivaldi slots and feeds. A novel feature of our design is that the antenna exhibits the arrangements of a T-junction power splitter with an out-of-phase feeding mechanism in one of the arms, followed by a T-branching feeding to even arrays of proper Vivaldi antenna arrangement contributing high realized gain and front-to-back ratio up to 14.12 dBi and 23.23 dB respectively applicable for not only ultra-wideband (UWB) application, also for sensing and position detecting. The high directivity over the entire UWB frequency band in both higher and lower frequency ranges ensures that the antenna can be used in microwave through-wall imaging along with resolution imaging for ground penetration radar (GPR) applications. The fabricated antenna parameters are in close agreement with the simulated and measured results and are deployed for the detection of targets inside the voids of the concrete brick.

Recently, wireless telecommunication networks have become a promising alternative for rainfall measuring instruments that complement existing monitoring devices. Due to big dataset of rainfall and telecommunication networks data, empirical computational methods are less adequate representation of the actual data. Therefore, deep learning models are proposed for the analysis of big data and give more accurate representation of real measurements. In this study, we investigated rainfall monitoring results from experimental measurements and deep learning approaches such as artificial neural networks and long short-term memory. The experimental setups were in South Korea over terrestrial and satellite links, and in Ethiopia over terrestrial link for different frequency bands and link distances. The received signal level and rainfall data measurement covered four years in South Korea and the data were sampled at intervals of 10 seconds. In Ethiopia, the data were recorded over 10 months and sampled at intervals of 15 minutes. The received signal power data were used to derive the rainfall rate distribution and compared to actual rainfall measurements over the same time periods. Our results demonstrate that the proposed deep learning-based models generally have a good fit with the measured rainfall rates. The rainfall rate generated from terrestrial links was a better fit to the actual rainfall rate data than that generated from satellite links.

At the rise of the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence (AI), along with key enabling technologies such as millimeter waves (mm-waves) can be used to launch the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond communication links. However, the quality of radio links at higher frequency bands is limited by atmospheric elements. Among others, rainfall is the major propagation impairment at millimetric wave bands, which needs to be considered during the link budget planning. In this study, we investigated the rain attenuation results obtained from experimental data, existing models, and proposed supervised artificial neural network (SANN) at K, Ka, and E-bands, respectively, for terrestrial links in South Korea. The measurement campaigns were between Incheon, National Radio Research Agency (RRA) tower station, to the EMS Dongyoksang tower station operating at 75 GHz over a 100-m path length, and between Incheon, RRA tower station to Khumdang, Korea Telecom (KT) tower station, operating at 18 and 38 GHz over a 3.2-km path length. The three-year rainfall and received signal level data measurements over these paths were used to determine rain attenuation distributions at different percentages of exceedance time distribution. Additionally, three existing attenuation models, ITU-R 530.17, Lin, and Revised Silva Mello (RSM) models were compared with measured rain attenuation. Our results indicate that these models did not correspond with measured results. Therefore, in this research, we proposed a supervised learning-based attenuation prediction method, which provides better performance than existing models. Furthermore, we validated our proposed model with measured received-signal level and rainfall data at the above-mentioned operating frequencies.