In this paper, temporal characteristics of several initial electric field pulses of preliminary breakdown process (PBP) from very close negative cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes are compared to close narrow bipolar pulses (NBPs) to observe any similarity that may exists. Interestingly, we found that the initial PBP pulses are similar to close NBP with zero crossing time less than 5 mu s, do not preceded by any slow field change and followed by pronounce static component. As NBPs are believed to be a result of relativistic runaway electron avalanches discharge, this finding is an indication that the initial electric field pulses of PBP are perhaps the result of the same discharge mechanism.

This paper analyzes the interference of lightning flashes with multiple antennas wireless communicationsystems operating in the microwave band at 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz. A bit error rate (BER) measurement method was usedto evaluate BER and packet error rate (PER) during 5 heavy thunderstorms on January 25 and March 17 to 20, 2011,respectively. In addition, BER measurements also were done on January 21 and March 30, 2011 under fair weather (FW)conditions providing a baseline for comparison. The Transmitter-Receiver separation was fixed at 10 meter with line-ofsight(LOS) consideration. We infer that lightning interfered with the transmitted digital pulses which resulted in a higherrecorded BER. The maximum recorded BER was 9.9·10-1 and the average recorded BER and PER were 2.07·10-2 and2.44·10-2 respectively during the thunderstorms with the average fair weather BER and PER values under the influence ofadjacent channel interference (ACI) and co-channel interference (CCI) being 1.75·10-5 and 7.35·10-6 respectively. Weconclude that multiple antennas wireless communication systems operating at the microwave frequency can besignificantly interfered by lightning.

In this study, cloud-to-ground (CG) flash and intra-cloud (IC) flash events that interfere with the transmission of bits in wireless communication system operating at 2.4 GHz were analyzed. Bit error rate (BER) and consecutive lost datagram (CLD) measurement methods were used to evaluate BER and burst error from 3 tropical thunderstorms on November 27, 28, and 29 during 2012 northeastern monsoon in Malaysia. A total of 850 waveforms from the electric field change recording system were recorded and examined. Out of these, 94 waveforms of very fine structure were selected which matched perfectly with the timing information of the recorded BER. We found that both CG and IC flashes interfered significantly with the transmission of bits in wireless communication system. The severity of the interference depends mainly on two factors namely the number of pulses and the amplitude intensity of the flash. The interference level becomes worst when the number of pulses in a flash increases and the amplitude intensity of pulses in a flash intensifies. During thunderstorms, wireless communication system has experienced mostly intermittent interference due to burst error. Occasionally, in the presence of very intense NBP event, wireless communication system could experience total communication lost. In CG flash, it can be concluded that PBP is the major. source of interference that interfered with the bits transmission and caused the largest burst error. In IC flash, we found that the typical IC pulses interfered the bits transmission in the same way as PBP and mixed events in CG flash and produced comparable and in some cases higher amount of burst error. NBP has been observed to interfere the bits transmission more severely than typical IC and CG flashes and caused the most severe burst error to wireless communication system.