THE ALPHASAT ALDO PARABONI SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT: OBJECTIVES AND PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Future broadband satellite communication systems, to be competitive with the terrestrial network, should be able to offer the terabit capacity and the very high data rates requested by the current market both for broadcast and multimedia applications. The consequent needed bandwidth requires the use of high carrier frequencies (Ka or Q/V bands and beyond) that are affected by important atmospheric impairments. As a result, the design of these advanced Satcom systems imply an extensive use of Propagation Impairment Mitigation Techniques, such as Link Power Control, site diversity or on board adaptive power allocation, and/or Adaptive Coding and Modulation and Data Rate Adaptation. In this scenario, the Alphasat "Aldo Paraboni" (TDP#5) payload (conceived and supported by the Italian Space Agency, as contribution to the Alphasat project, and executed by the European Space Agency, in the framework of the ARTES 8 Telecom program) allows the joint acquisition of attenuation and depolarization measurements at 19.7 and 39.4 GHz at the two main Italian ground stations (with a 4.2 m antenna), located in Tito Scalo and Spino d'Adda, and at the Austrian station (with 1.2 m antenna), located in Graz. In this contribution, the main objectives of the Alphasat Aldo Paraboni propagation experiment will be recalled and the first preliminary measurements at the Italian (Tito and Spino d'Adda) and Austrian (Graz) ground stations will be reported.