Validation of ground infrastructure in the framework of the ASI Q/V-band program

The Q/V Band program of ASI involves two main elements: the “Space Segment” and the “Mission Segment”. The Space Segment is represented by the Technology Demonstration Payload TDP#5, the “Aldo Paraboni” P/L. Financed by Italy through the ARTES-8 Program, it has been developed by the European Space Agency and implemented by italian space industries. It has been embarked as hosted payload on Alphasat satellite, and successfully launched on July 25th 2013. Alphasat is an INMARSAT Commercial Telecommunications Geosynchronous satellite, which uses the ESA developed Alphabus Platform and embarks four Technology Demonstration Payloads (TDPs). Among these TDPs, TDP#5 is devoted to the exploitation and the investigation of Q/V band communications. In conjunction with the Mission Segment (MS) the TDP#5 allows to carry out communications experiments (Propagation Impairment Mitigation Techniques — PIMT) at 40/50 GHz (Q/V-band) and propagation experiments at both 20 GHz (Ka-band) and 40 GHz (Q-band). The MS has been developed by ASI and consists of two transmitting/receiving Ground Stations (GS) and three control centers, for the execution of experiments in accordance with the requirements defined by the two Principal Investigators, appointed by ASI for the communication and propagation experiments. After the integration of all the elements composing the MS, the system test campaign started with the scope to demonstrate the correct operations through functional and performance tests. In particular, in addition to the propagation experiment verification, the campaign allows to test the Q/V band communication functions in the two payload configurations (i.e. in loopback mode and in cross mode).