Fade Mitigation in Future Q/V-band High-Throughput Satellites

Actual Ka-band SATCOM systems provide wide-band access to users located in areas unserved or underserved by the terrestrial infrastructure. The rapid development of terrestrial systems is pushing SATCOM companies to assess the exploitation of higher frequency bands (Q/V and maybe W) where larger bandwidths are available. This contribution proposes a possible configuration of a SATCOM system with European coverage featuring feeder link operation in the V-band. A time-series synthesizer has been used to model the propagation impairments produced by rain, whereas clear-sky attenuation is calculated by standard ITU-R formulas. A space diversity configuration of 18+2 gateways (including a clustered version made of two 9+1 sub-systems) would provide capacity values five times higher than actual Ka-band satellites, requiring an additional power margin against rain fades around 9-12 dB.