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Abstract-In the framework of the ITALSAT campaign various European institutions carried out propagation measurements at V band. In this frequency band, signal reception in a satellite-to- Earth or Earth-to-satellite path may suffer severely from signal attenuation due to meteorological effects such as rain, snow, hail, fog, clouds, etc., where rain provides the most significant contribution. In this paper, a joint analysis of the ITALSAT propagation measurement campaigns at 39.6 GHz (precisely 39.592 GHz) carried out at both Oberpfaffenhofen, close to Munich, Germany, and Spino d'Adda, close to Milan, Italy, is presented. For both stations long-term attenuation statistics are available and reveal that signal attenuation due to meteorological effects depends very much on the season and on the time of the day. Signal attenuation can be compensated by an appropriate fade margin. In this paper, we show that the required fade margin to guarantee a target link availability has to be chosen very carefully, since it depends very much on the time interval upon which availability is defined. We consider complete years, ITU-R recommendations, all single months of the year, worst months, and spring, summer, fall, and winter. Furthermore, we evaluate diurnal variations for four time intervals: 00:00-06:00, 06:00-12:00, 12:00-18:00, and 18:00-24:00. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The August President's Page is devoted to a description of the IEEE Future Directions Committee by Roberto Saracco. Roberto Saracco is the President of EIT ICTLABS Italy and Italy Node Director (European Institute of Innovation and Technology). His background is in math and computer science. Up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics, and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE, where he has served in various positions in ComSoc, and he currently leads the Future Directions Committee. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 11 books. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents two lectures given by professor Charles K. Kao at the Laurea honoris causa Lectio Magistralis in Padova, Italy on October 18, 1996. In the first lecture, he discussed the role of optical fiber in telecommunication and likened information highway to physical transportation. He then tackled the importance of and innovations in the Internet and information technology.

In June 2005, a special selection of images concerning the development of telecommunications, kept in the archives of the Italian Navy, were collected, selected, and organized in a panel exhibition held at the Italian Navy Academy. A selection of the rarest of these images is presented here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]