Advances in Satellite Communications Part 2: Guest Editorial

This special issue is devoted to the satellite communications (SatCom) advances so as to gather the most important contributions in this field from academia and industry. In particular, the importance of this issue is also due to the fact that the last issue appearing on IEEE JSAC about SatCom is dated back to 2004 and therefore many important technology advances have been testified in the meantime, actually revolutionizing the satellite industry. In particular, important innovations have been brought to the design of both ground and space segments, spanning physical layers up to upper layers of the protocol stack.