Assessment of Practical Smart Gateway Diversity Based on Multisite Measurements in Q-/V-Band

Next generations of high throughput satellite (HTS) systems operating a $Q$ -/ $V$ -band network of gateways (GWs) for the feeder link need to apply some form of smart gateway diversity (SGD) to ensure they meet the demanding availability targets. However, most of the published research on SGD usually resorts to ideal assumptions that are not realistic for an operational system. To evaluate in more depth the performance of practical SGD, this article exploits for the first time multisite propagation measurements for a network of six measurement sites (GWs) at 40 GHz. Based on this, it studies the performance of SGD in terms of feeder availability and number of switches between GWs taking into account the climatic region, the switching processing delay, the clustering of GWs, and the impact of downlink versus uplink frequency in $Q$ -/ $V$ -band. Along the course, the interplay between propagation aspects and SGD operational aspects is highlighted.