Aldo paraboni mission how technology demonstrators and scientific activities pave the way for commercial SatCom Q/V band missions

The Q/V band technology demonstration mission on board the Alphasat satellite has been operational for four and a half years, since January 2014. The mission was conceived by Professor Aldo Paraboni’s, who proposed to investigate through a low scale demonstration mission the characteristics of propagation impairments and satellite communication systems at Q/V band frequencies. ASI supported the mission and its implementation, space and Italian ground mission segments, were undertaken respectively under ESA’s ARTES Programme and ASI’s national research programme. In addition, a ground segment in Austria has been implemented, thanks to the support of the Austrian delegation to ESA, under ESA’s ARTES Programme. The Aldo Paraboni Mission has also enabled a number of R&D projects in the framework of ESA ARTES 5.1, TRP, and PECS programs. A number of national space organisations, including CNES and NASA, are also actively involved in the wide propagation campaign carried out over Europe. The scientific coordination between experimenters is performed by a group of Alphasat Aldo Paraboni Propagation Experimenters (ASAPE) promoted by ESA and ASI. The Aldo Paraboni mission is paving the way towards the development of fully dimensioned missions operating at Q/V band. The Aldo Paraboni payload is composed by two payloads, a propagation payload consisting of two beacon transmitters. And a communication payload that enables two simultaneous communication channels at Q/V band. Aldo Paraboni’s propagation mission complements the research on propagation impairments over satellite communication systems, which were initiated in the 90’s through missions like Olympus and Italsat at high frequency bands. The support of the scientific community is paramount to the success of the mission gathering propagation data from multiple locations over Europe at Ka and Q bands. The data obtained over the planned mission lifetime, i.e. 6 years, can lead to accurate propagation models that will be used on the design of communication systems at these frequency bands, with particular regard to the spatial-temporal model of the radio channel over Europe for multi-beam reconfigurable satellite systems. The results of these activities are intended to be submitted to ITU-R Study Group 3 “Radiowave Propagation” to contribute to International Radio Regulations for Fixed Satellite Services. The Aldo Paraboni Communication mission covers a broad range of tests using the Q/V band communication payload on board Alphasat, which aim at optimizing the operation of the communication systems at these frequency bands. The utilization of propagation impairment mitigation techniques, like adaptive coding and modulation, power adaptation or space diversity techniques will greatly contribute to the optimization of the design of the payloads and ground segment elements of fully dimensioned systems that will operate at these frequencies. This paper aims at presenting how the Aldo Paraboni mission, with the actual technologies and results from scientific and communication experiments, contributes to the characterization and design of future operational satellite communication systems at Q/V band.