## 5 Conclusions  
Steering antenna beams in tropospheric communication systems to heights delivering high received power overcomes slow fading, improves link availability, and enhances the achievable data rates. Beam pointing dynamics provides knowledge about favorable angles or heights for beam steering at different times of the day and in different seasons. It also helps determine the height limit up to which steering would be useful. This knowledge will help develop an efficient, faster, and more focused beam steering approach. The important contributions made in this paper are the development of a modified ray-based model that gives a more realistic representation of tropospheric propagation characteristics than [PERSON]'s ray-based model. A detailed methodology for the determination of the beam pointing dynamics of a link is also presented using the modified model. Beam pointing dynamics for two links with different climate types, located in the Indian states of Gujarat and Assam, have been obtained using the given methodology with real-world data on atmospheric parameters obtained from IMD. The results given in the paper show received power levels obtained for different beam positions on both links, establishing the fact that beam steering can help achieve higher data rates. This paper also explains the reason for the higher received power obtained from elevated beams by discussing refractive index gradients on the Ahmedabad link on a specific day. The current work on tropo systems suggests that antenna beams with the lowest elevation angles always deliver the highest power, as any increase in the elevation angle of the beams introduces losses. This makes the discussion novel and path-breaking as it proves that elevated beams can deliver higher powers and, hence, builds a case for beam steering in tropo systems. Another significant contribution of the paper is the fact that it presents the prospect of dual data streaming on tropo links using a dual-beam design with a fixed beam with the lowest elevation angle and a dynamically steered elevated beam. This prospect is supported by the results showing that there is at least one elevated beam delivering power that is either higher or close to the power delivered by the lowest beam. The results show a comparison of the theoretically achievable data rates for single-beam and dual-beam systems. The results show that dual data streaming using a dual beam can significantly enhance the data-carrying capacity of tropospheric links as compared to conventional single fixed-beam designs.  
Conceptualization, A.G. and R.M.; methodology, A.G. and A.K.K.; validation, A.G. and A.K.; formal analysis, R.M. and A.K.; resources, A.G. and A.K.K.; data curation, A.G.; writing--original draft preparation, A.G. and R.M.; writing--review and editing, A.G. and A.K.; visualization, A.G. and A.K.K.; supervision, R.M. and A.K.K.; project administration, A.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research received no external funding. The original contributions related to tropospheric link parameters, presented in the study, are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s. Restrictions apply to the availability of meteorological data. Data were obtained from  
Figure 7: Comparison of theoretically achievable data rates with single-beam design and dual data streaming two-beam design for Ahmedabad and Guwahati links.  
Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and are available at [[https://dsp.imdpune.gov.in](https://dsp.imdpune.gov.in)]([https://dsp.imdpune.gov.in](https://dsp.imdpune.gov.in)) with the permission of IMD.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.