ABSTRACT
Climatic phenomena such as rain, snow, and gas absorption cause attenuation and distortion to radio waves in an outdoor environment. Th e extent of signal degradation is primarily dependent on the carrier frequency and the actual rate of rainfall at a given time. In addition, the eff ect of rain is the main cause of attenuation at frequencies above several GHz commonly used in broadband wireless networking applications [1]. Th is chapter looks at how rain attenuation aff ects the operations of both fi xed and mobile computing devices, and various ways of reducing their impacts on system performance.
