Journal of Applied Sciences Research, 2(11): 1014-1018, 2006

© 2006, INSInet Publication

Perspectives on the Effects of Harmattan on Radio Frequency Waves

D.D. Dajab

Department of Electrical Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

Abstract: Harmattan dust clusters at its highest intensities can reduce visibility to less than a hundred
meters.Similar precipitations like rain absorb and scatter electromagnetic energy leading to attenuation in its
signal strength.In this paper spatial harmattan particle densities as approximated from visibility data are utilized
to determine the specific particle attenuation possible on radio frequency signals.The attenuation variations
obtained indicates a significant leap in the values during harmattan and non-harmattan periods.The predominant
propagation mechanisms likely during the harmattan and how the loss in power is incurred in radio frequency
signals are also discussed.

Key words:

INTRODUCTION MATERIALS AND METHODS

The harmattan is a weather condition in the tropics in
which dust particles (precipitates) are blown up into the
air by winds defined as air in horizontal motion relative to
the earth surface1 and pushed southwards from the Sahara
desert by the northeast winds. Harmattan intensity may be
so great that visibility at ground level is reduced to less
than a hundred meters by the dust clusters. Harmattan
occurs in Nigeria during the dry season, that is, between
the months of November and March and with its
micronsize particles, harmattan dust clusters resemble that
of fog and the space they cover can be considered as a
dielectric – since the clusters consists predominantly of
quartz layer which non-coherently scatters RF signals 2.
Propagation studies are required to identify the likely
channel characteristics that would be encountered in any
operating environment in order to form the channel model
of the physical layer of the communication system.
Established wireless systems in the frequency range
between 500 MHz and 5 GHz have resulted in the
development of different approaches to the prediction of
wave propagation. Within this frequency range are
different telecommunication applications and services3.
Studies have shown 4,5,6 that precipitations such as those
of rain, harmattan dust etc absorb and scatter
electromagnetic energy which leads to attenuation in its
signal strength. Improved models are desired that explore
the realm of overall macroscopic signal propagation in a
local environment and that adequately captures the time-
varying behaviour of representative communication
channels7. Wireless communication links are generally
described as time-varying frequency-selective fading
multipath channels. The topology, link performance and
quality of service (QoS) delivered to the user is
characterized as highly time varying 8.
The records of daily meteorological observations,
obtained from the Meteorological Department of the
Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN9),
Zaria Aerodrome,and the meteorological section of the
soil science department of the Institute for Agriculcural
Research(IAR10) serve as the inputs to the foregoing
analyses.The data cover the periods 2001 to 2002.
There are three ways of evaluating the performance
of radio communication systems: by mathematical
analysis, by computer simulation and by measurement.
The characteristics of these techniques can be summarized
as follows:
Mathematical Analysis: This offers quick results with a
very good insight into what is actually happening with the
process being evaluated, for example, it enables us to see
the relationship between the various parameters in the
system and the effect of the variation of one parameter.
However, in most cases it is necessary to make many
simplifying assumptions to enable such an analysis be
used. This is inevitably the case when communication is
taking place over propagation channels with multipath
and fading.
Computer Simulation: An increasing trend in the field
of computer simulation of complex systems of all types
(that is, link or physical level and network models) is
away from dedicated programs written in conventional
high level languages (for example, FORTRAN, C, C++)
towards the use of high-level simulation packages,
wherein simulation models are built up from blocks that
are usually graphically represented and joined together in
a drawing package-like environment. High level packages
of this nature are available for a wide range of application

Corresponding Author: D.D. Dajab, Department of Electrical Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria
E.mail: danjuma.dajab@gmail.com

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 J. Appl. Sci. Res., 2(11): 1014-1018, 2006
areas. The area of suitable application of a package
depends on features such as data supported in the
libraries.
Measurement: This is more time-consuming than
computer simulation if hardware design or redesign is
required and likely to prove very expensive. However, it
does provide real-time operation and the most accurate
estimate of performance if used in conjunction with a
channel simulator or by trialing in the real-world
environment11.Of these mathematical analyses method
will be applied in this paper.
Generally the problem of estimating the attenuation
of RF waves caused by the various forms of precipitation
(rain, snow, fog and harmattan dust etc) is quite difficult.
In practice it has been convenient to express the
attenuation due to rain as a function of the precipitation
rate 12,5,13. In the case of harmattan, no known attempt at
quantifying or measuring its precipitation rate is available
except the measure of how it distracts visibility (with
respect to distance). To fully understand the mechanism
of harmattan attenuation therefore it is essential to
estimate the rate of the harmattan precipitations.
By analogy to the attenuation of microwaves by
rainfall13, the specific attenuation due to harmattan dust
particles may be predicted using eqt(1) though further
experiments are required to establish the validity of this
interpretation.
arain = aρb dB/km (1)
Where ρ- the rainfall rate [mm / hr]
a, b – regression coefficients which are a function of
the frequency f, of the temperature T, of the drop
size distribution and to a lesser extent, of the
wave polarization
The problem of calculating the values of a and b for
a given meteorological data is given by the relations14.
⎛ n ⎞ ⎛ n ⎞⎛ n ⎞
n ⎜ ∑ x i yi ⎟ − ⎜ ∑ x ii ⎟⎜ ∑ yi ⎟
b = ⎝ i =1 ⎠ ⎝ i =1 ⎠⎝ i =1 ⎠
2
⎛ n
⎞ ⎛ n ⎞ (2)
n ⎜ ∑ xi2 ⎟ − ⎜ ∑ xi ⎟
⎝ i =1 ⎠ ⎝ i =1 ⎠
n n
∑y i − b∑ x i
a= i =1 i =1
(3)
n higher.
where – is the number of pairs of observation
x- is the temperature observations
y- particle size distributions
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Available meteorological data on harmattan dust,
however, are currently presented in terms of visibility in
units of distance and the question is how to relate these
records of ground level visibility to the actual particle rate
(or density) of harmattan dust in the air. It is known1 that
a pressure increase and a temperature decrease are
responsible for the movement of winds, which serve as a
means of transporting heat, dust particles, moisture etc.
Here a spatial particle density ρ [g/m3] may be a
meaningful concept, given that the dust particle carrying
capacity of the winds depend on the relative humidity.
The spatial harmattan particle density may be
approximated15 by the empirical relation.
( Vf m − Vi ) ρp
ρi = g / m3 (4)
h
Where Vfm - the best visibility figure for the year
(period) [m]
Vi - observed (measured) visibility profile [m]
ρP - mean particle density [g/m3]
h - humidity profile (in decimals) [g/m3]
We will assume a state in which the harmattan
dust particles consists of a subset of the complete set
of fixed sizes (which have small details compared to
the wavelength) and with a certain distribution per
cubic meters (which may be ascertained experimentally)
and then we may obtain using the adapted eqn (1)
aparticle = aρb, the specific particle attenuation variation
(dB/m).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The transmission condition is the degree of mutual
visibility between the transmitter and receiver antennas;
the conditions that may be encountered in practice are
line-of-sight (LOS), partial LOS and non-LOS 16.
The periods selected for the purpose of this study
capture the markedly differentiated seasons of the year
(i.e. May-June and Nov-Dec). From the temperature
curves shown in Fig. 1, it can be observed that the onset
of the harmattan corresponds to the November-December
period during which temperatures are lowest, while May-
June is a period corresponding to the onset of the rainy
(wet) season when the temperatures are moderately
The low humidity which occurs at the onset of
harmattan from November makes the air to be very dry
(consequently all surrounding ground materials) and the
 J. Appl. Sci. Res., 2(11): 1014-1018, 2006

25 May
0.035

Specific Attenuation (micro dB)

(a)
20 0.03
0.025
Temperature

15
0.02
10 2002 0.015
2003
0.01
5
0.005
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 0 5 10 15 20 25
Month Hour of the day

Fig. 1: Annual temperature profile December

800
(b)

Specific Attenuation (m dB)

100 700
90 600
80 500
400
70
300
60
200
50 May
June 100
40 Nov
Dec 0
30 0 5 10 15 20 25
-100
20 Hour of the Day
Fig. 3: Specific attenuation(a) May (b) December.
10
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 themselves but to scattering 5 which depends on relative
Hours
values of the wavelength and the size of the particles.
Fig. 2: Daily average ambient relative humidity Thus, the total pathloss will be expressed as

low temperatures too cause the North East winds to ⎛ d ⎞

blow across the surface of the earth raising with it
an increasing content of dust particles into the air.
Generally, it can be observed that the appearance of
harmattan is always associated with a drop in the
ambient relative humidity, while its absence is reflected
by an increase. From the curves of Fig3. the lowest
humidity periods relate to the highest harmattan
dust densities.
The estimated density of harmattan dust for
the period of study are as presented in Table 1
(Assuming the mean particle density to be
equivalent to the mean particle density in
contaminated water = 0.889 ± 0.01 g/m3 )17.
The curves in Fig 3 clearly indicate the possibility of
increases in attenuation due to particle attenuation as the
harmattan intensity deepens. The attenuation ranges from
4.4 µdB up to 33 µdB and from 2.13 mdB up to 718 mdB
for May and December respectively(assuming a distance
of 15m). There is remarkable leap as observed in the
magnitude of the particle attenuation between the two
periods. The power absorption and scattering by these
particles (harmattan dust, fog etc) increase rapidly with
frequency and with density of the precipitation. The
greatest losses are not due to absorption in the particles
L p ( d ) = L p ( d o ) + 10n log10 ⎜ ⎟ + α particled [ dB]
⎝ do ⎠ (5)
Where d0 = 0.99 distance of the reference far field
from the transmitter
Lp(d0) is free space pathloss
n is the propagation pathloss exponent
The study of the mechanism of harmattan attenuation
of radio frequency signals will involve the examination of
its dielectric constant structure using equipment such as
air borne refractometers which goes beyond the scope of
our present consideration.
It is a fact that whereas rain drops are falling with a
velocity, most harmattan particles are suspended (or
moving) in space and exhibit complex form of motion.
The harmattan dust particles may be said to exhibit two
major forms of interaction, that is, electromagnetic and
gravitational. The interaction between particles which are
charged are referred to as electromagnetic interactions, on
the other hand, gravitational interactions are charge
independent (rather mass dependent)18. Theoretical
treatment of the electromagnetic interactions is the subject
of quantum electrodynamics.

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 J. Appl. Sci. Res., 2(11): 1014-1018, 2006

Table 1: Harmattan dust density in air (ρi)

Month May 2002 June 2002 November 2002 December 2002
---------------------------- --------------------------------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------
hours T(oC) ρi(g/m3) T(oC) ρi(g/m3) T(oC) ρi(g/m3) T(oC) ρi(g/m3)
0 22.5 40.28 21.2 1.02 17.8 114.29 13.5 205.15
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 22.8 35.06 20.6 1.01 15 114.29 10.8 133.35
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 22.5 35.81 20.1 1.95 14.3 108.22 8.9 106.68
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 25 45.23 24.4 1.19 23.5 248.9 18.9 322.25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12 30.7 55.56 26.8 1.46 28.5 311.13 23.7 622.25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15 30.5 57.88 27.1 1.56 27.5 286.44 25.5 429.67
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18 22 50.32 21 1.34 23.5 161.13 18.5 368.28
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21 22.7 42.19 21.5 1.08 20.2 135.68 15 234.36

Considering, however, that
C The velocity of the electromagnetic waves is much
greater than the velocity of the harmattan particles or
wind (that is 3 x 108 m/s >> about 5m/s) and
C There is a strong inhomogeneity in harmattan dust
particles,
It can be assumed that the dust particles may be
approximated as static and the consideration of its
interactions are best reduced to the interaction of particles
with their nearest neighbours to give a good
approximation to the total interaction. In such an
imperfectly conducting medium(dielectric space) the
dominant harmattan propagation mechanisms are
absorption and scattering.
Absorption Mechanism: The field strength of the
transmission is given19 by;
ω ⎛ dn ⎞
− pd jω⎜ t − ⎟
E z = E me c
e⎝ c ⎠
V/m
Equation (6) shows that propagation in an imperfect
medium is accompanied by a reduction in the wave
amplitude in an exponential fashion. The quantity
ω
δ= p m −1
c by transmission path length, obstructions in the signal
is called the absorption coefficient and the velocity of
waves in the imperfect medium is v = c/n m/s
The harmattan dust filled space has the dielectric
particles subjected to polarization by the electric field.
The inducement of dipoles, in the particles making up the
volume of space absorb electrical energy as in (6) and the
waves suffers attenuation as it proceeds.
Scattering Mechanism: Attenuation due to absorption is
larger than attenuation due to scatter for wavelengths that
are small compared with the particle size. For
wavelengths that are long compared to the particle size,
the attenuation due to scatter is larger than the attenuation
due to absorption5. When the wavelength is large
compared with the size of the particle, the wave is
scattered in arbitrary or all directions, but when the
wavelength is small compared with the particle size then
most of the scattering takes place within a narrow cone
surrounding the forward direction of propagation of the
incident radiation4. The wavelength of the Global System
for Mobile telephony(GSM) at 900 MHz is 33cm which
is fairly large relative to the sizes of the harmattan dust
particles. In this circumstance, the mechanism of
scattering is predominant. As a result plane waves become
the inhomogenous type and the amplitude of the wave is
no longer constant over planes of constant phase. This
inhomogenous (scattered) plane wave has the following
properties:
C The direction of propagation of the wave is along the
X-axis. ii) The amplitude of the field components
(6) (scattered) decrease exponentially in the + z
direction20.
and the scattering of energy in arbitrary directions gives
rise to a net loss of energy in the direction towards the
receiver5.
(7) Conclusion: Attenuation or signal fading can be caused
path (such as harmattan dust clusters) and multipath
effects, thereby leading to a drop in the signal power.
When more than one path are available for radio signal
propagation, multipath occurs. The phenomenon of
reflection, diffraction and scattering etc, all give rise to
additional radio propagation paths beyond the direct “line
of sight” path between the transmitter and the receiver.
The other impacts of these impairments include: path loss,
temporal and spatial variation of path loss and
polarization mismatch. As a result of multipath the
received field at a terminal is made up of a combination

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 J. Appl. Sci. Res., 2(11): 1014-1018, 2006
of the direct rays and the reflected, diffracted, scattered
rays, etc, which experience longer paths than the direct
rays, are thus delayed and result in the received waveform
being a summation of the transmitted replicas of the
various weighted time shifts of the rays which could add
up distractively.
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