Communication at higher frequency bands has numerous benefits but susceptible to rain impairments. Rain-induced attenuation becomes more prominent as the carrier frequency and rain rate increase. Hence, precise knowledge of rain rate can help in predicting the level of rain-induced attenuation. The paper determines point cumulative rainfall rate at 0.1% of time exceedance and converts integration time from 5 min to 1 min. The specific and the total rain-induced attenuation were predicted at 0.1% of time exceedance from 12 GHz to 18 GHz for both horizontal and vertical polarizations. Lavergnat-Gole rain rate conversion model and ITU-R P.838-3 model were employed using four-year rainfall data obtained from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The results revealed that the peak activities of rainfall rates were recorded at lower integration times, and the total rain-induced attenuation increases with increasing operating frequencies, which is greater for horizontally polarized waves compared to vertically polarized waves.

Wireless mobile communication is entering the era of 5G technology very rapidly. This increasing demand for wireless communication is basically due to very simple installation and maintenance as compared to other wired network technologies. Therefore, rapidly increasing demand for broadband and high-speed mobile communication requires a very high-speed network which fulfils all the requirements of growing broadband wireless services. The only promising solution of the future wireless high-speed mobile communication is transmission of Radio Frequency (RF) signals on optical fiber. This results in a very high-speed network called Radio over Fiber (RoF) network, which is basically a combination of wired network and wireless services, in which RF signal is transmitted over the optical fiber by modulating the light with RF signal which contains the required information. RoF technology has become the backbone of the future broadband 5G wireless network. For RoF architecture, improvement in RoF link performance is the most challenging feature. In this paper, an overview of RoF architecture is elaborated with various RoF link performance improvement techniques. The comparison in terms of advantage and limitation of every performance improvement technique is summarized. The paper concludes with various research opportunities available in this area.

Digital Hearing Aid (DHA) device selectively filters sound signals in subbands. Gain is added as per hearing loss mentioned in audiogram. DHA uses digital filters and amplifies processed signal, and this signal is transferred to the ear. Multiple DHA manufacturing companies all over world have innovative and miniature DHA devices in their product range. They do rigorous research and development to improve product functionalities. Most of them use design method of digital filters using selective amplification by adding gain to subband where patients have hearing loss. Nowadays, DHAs are more customized to individual patient hearing loss characteristics. Most of the available hearing aid designs use filter banks with fixed subbands. The paper focuses on reducing the complexity of the algorithms improving DHA user experience in changing noise and proposes a single reconfigurable transfer function type of digital Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter to achieve a best fitting to audiogram as per the specifications with IEC 60118-15 standard, and the processed signals are tested with ITU-T-PESQ standards. The paper uses International Speech Test Signal (ISTS) standard speech audio signal to test designed filter, and the results are found to be very satisfactory compared with the fixed filter banks. The paper discusses combined or reconfigured transfer function approach for use in DHA devices and design of reconfigurable FIR filter bank with adjusting different parameters in terms of requirements of DHA.