Alphasat TDP#5 mission: Towards future EHF satellite communications

Future broadband satellite communications systems, able to support the so-called gigabit-connectivity, will require a very large bandwidth availability; this pushes towards the exploitation of “beyond Ka-band” systems, in particular Q/V band systems. This paper presents the most important features of the TDP#5 (Technology Demonstration Payload number 5) scientific mission that will provide us the opportunity to perform, for the first time, a combined communication and propagation experiment over a Q/V band satellite link.