Weather-Forecast-Driven Satellite Link Optimization: Experimental Validations

Ka-band experimental validations of a radiometeorological forecast model chain are reported. Measurements from BepiColombo ESA mission to Mercury are used. An optimization of the satellite link exploiting daily weather-forecast statistics of the atmospheric channel is implemented, which defines a link-budget optimization technique. Different global-scale data are used for the model initialization, while three ensemble methods for the computation of the daily statistics are used. In total, 54 statistics were tested over 42 sample passes characterized by different meteorological conditions. The results demonstrate superiority of the model chain with respect to other conventional techniques.