Feasibility of 5G Services Over Ka-band Athena-Fidus Satellite
A Study on Ka-band Frequency Use for 5G based Applications Over Satellite
M. Luglio
1
, C. Roseti
1
, F. Zampognaro
1
and E. Russo
2
1
University of Rome“Tor Vergata”, Via del Politecnico 1, 00133, Rome, Italy
2
Italian Space Agency (ASI), Rome, Italy
Keywords:
5G, Athena Fidus, Link Budget, Ka-band.
Abstract:
5G is rapidly approaching: companies and public institutions are significantly investing to design, develop
and deploy the next generation telecommunication systems which will be based on flexible network manage-
ment and new services definition. In this forthcoming scenario, the satellite can play a meaningful role to
allow meeting all the claimed requirements, i.e., to support/complement terrestrial networks for a large set
of applications. The Athena Fidus system has been realized to support civil and governmental services. The
assessment of the overall capacity provided this platform and, in particular, the nominal IP-based bandwidth
per terminal is important for the definition of the services and to efficiently plan future its integration with
terrestrial networks, in compliance with 5G scenarios. In this paper, the real characteristics of Athena Fidus
DVB-S2/DVB-RCS links are considered to identify the set of services that will be possible to offer. The ob-
jective is to draw the operational context to be considered for the potential involvement of Athena Fidus in the
next communication systems.
1 INTRODUCTION
The design, development and deployment of 5G
telecommunication networks (5G-PPP, 2016) is the
present objective of the major players of the sec-
tor (network operators, service operators and content
providers). Many resources are invested in research
activities and trials by public institutions (e.g., Euro-
pean Commission) or private companies. The race
among far East, Europe and USA has started and soon
the winner, the first commercial 5G operational ser-
vice operator, will be known.
The specifications of these new systems concern
mainly the network management, fully based on Soft-
ware Defined Networking SDN, Network Func-
tions Virtualisation NFV, Mobile Edge Computing
MEC, and on other innovative concepts above the
physical layer and networking legacy assumptions, as
described in (5G-PPP, 2016).
In this new very challenging scenario, the satel-
lite could be fruitfully included in hybrid terrestrial-
satellite communication architectures, to ensure the
full respect of all the requirements and capabilities as-
sociated to the 5G deployment (Luglio et al., 2009b),
(Luglio et al., 2009a), (Bacco et al., 2014). In partic-
ular, satellite data services can be useful for (and not
limited to):
Ubiquitous Coverage for IP Multimedia Commu-
nications. Satellite can allow to extend the broadband
coverage in scarcely populated areas where invest-
ments for terrestrial infrastructures are not econom-
ically viable. Furthermore, satellite could help ter-
restrial providers in responding to users’ capacity re-
quirements in densely populated areas where capacity
demand outstrips the ability of existing terrestrial in-
frastructures, and to compensate as well the intrinsic
asymmetry of some terrestrial services and networks
(i.e., asymmetry of ADSL services, with a very low
upload compared to download).
Global Content Distribution. Satellite can im-
prove efficiency in broadcasting contents on large ar-
eas, taking advantage of satellite intrinsic coverage
that put the satellite in a predominant position in ad-
dressing on demand streaming and live broadcasting
services. Currently high definition (HD), but also 4K
and 8K Ultra HD contents, are consumed by eager
mobile users requiring an efficient content distribu-
tion on distributed edge caches in order to reduce the
latency experienced. Satellite can deliver the contents
right to the edges of the 5G networks, avoiding over-
load the ISP terrestrial networks.
Contribution Services. Thanks to the availabil-
Luglio, M., Roseti, C., Zampognaro, F. and Russo, E.
Feasibility of 5G Services Over Ka-band Athena-Fidus Satellite - A Study on Ka-band Frequency Use for 5G based Applications Over Satellite.
DOI: 10.5220/0006467900330042
In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE 2017) - Volume 1: DCNET, pages 33-42
ISBN: 978-989-758-256-1
Copyright © 2017 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
33
ity of significant amount of capacity, the satellite is
(and has been) often utilized as live contribution link
for TV content creation and delivery, from the remote
place to collection centers and then re-distributed in
broadcast (also on satellite, as described in previous
bullet point). Large scale video surveillance, trans-
mission of event-driven high-bandwidth videos, and
other multimedia IP based services require an agile
communication system not constrained by a fixed in-
frastructure and/or reserved capacity. Satellite with its
global coverage does not need of ad-hoc deployment
of an infrastructure and it can manage on-demand up-
link bandwidth as a dynamic and flexible IP broad-
band contribution service.
Specific Mission Services. Satellite architecture
envisages a limited number of nodes and presents a
relatively short deployment time. These character-
istics make satellite suitable for the support of spe-
cific services associated to disaster-recovery, tactical
operations, search and rescue missions, with require-
ments drastically different from those associated to
consumer-grade fixed services (e.g., home internet ac-
cess for web browsing, email, etc.).
Connection of a Large Number of Devices. Satel-
lites are tailored to support connectivity for a large
number of devices distributed on a large geographi-
cal scale because of their wide coverage and inher-
ently efficient broadcast/multicast capabilities, com-
plementing local terrestrial data distribution through
the already existing possibility to receive down-
link satellite information. IoT/M2M communications
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) indicates a set of tech-
nologies (sensors or actuators) tailored to exchange
data without an explicit human intervention. Internet
of Things (IoT) concept extends M2M by introduc-
ing IP connectivity to allow interoperability among
different-vendor-systems. Among IoT/M2M require-
ments, it is possible to mention: device multitude,
scalability, intrusiveness, security, burst transmission.
Satellite characteristics can efficiently satisfy or at
least help to match such requirements.
The paper investigates the potentiality of using IP-
based bearer services offered by Athena Fidus, show-
ing in details its characteristics, configuration and,
by means of simulations, link budget margins and
achievable bitrates, suitable to support 5G applica-
tions. The results presented will allow to confirm the
possibility to utilize an operational satellite in Ka-
band frequencies, to provide a subset of the above
listed services, with a determined quality of service
and availability.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows:
section 2 includes the description of the Athena
Fidus platform; section 3 describes the detailed radio-
frequency channels specification in relation with sys-
tem availability; in section 4 simulations are run to
show link-budget results and relative resulting bearer
channel, and in section 5 conclusions are drawn and
possible future works are described.
2 ATHENA FIDUS
CHARACTERISTICS AND
ARCHITECTURE
The Athena Fidus (Access on THeaters for Euro-
pean allied forces Nations-French Italian Dual Use
Satellite) system (Iorio et al., 2012), (Sacco, 2016)
has been jointly developed by ASI (the Italian Space
Agency) and CNES (Centre National dEtudes Spa-
tiales). The aim was to build a telecommunication
infrastructure able to support/complement terrestrial
networks for a large set of civil and governmental ap-
plications. Athena Fidus is based on a single geo-
stationary satellite operating in the Ka-band and EHF
band, of which Ka allotment is assigned for civil use
and considered in the rest of the paper. The system is
designed to provide in general:
- Star and transparent mesh communication ser-
vices over national coverage in the civilian Ka-
band;
- Star and transparent mesh communication ser-
vices in EHF and Ka-bands over national cover-
age, and steerable spot beams for military use.
As concerns the civil payload, Italy is the geo-
graphical reference area considered for this paper; the
overall expected data rate is over 1 Gbit/s (and pos-
sibly up to 3 Gbit/s). Athena-Fidus uses DVB-RCS
(ETSI, 2005a) for return link communications on a
shared channel, and point to point links (for mesh
communications) or DVB-S2 (ETSI, 2005b) broad-
casting for forward links, to enhance transmission ca-
pacity and service availability.
Athena Fidus current utilization allows to consider
it a potential resource for the launch of new services,
provided that it can assure a suitable amount of net
bandwidth to the target applications. In fact, its raw
capacity is suitable to the transport of IP packets, us-
ing proper encapsulation methods (such as Generic
Stream Encapsulation, GSE), for a wide set of appli-
cations. The capacity available to the 5G/IP based
service depends on the physical characteristics of the
defined satellite channels, taking into account the
ground antenna parameters in terms of EIRP (Equiv-
alent Isotropic Radiated Power, by transmitter) and
G/T (Antenna gain-to-noise-temperature, the specific
figure of merit of the antenna in use = G
R
/T ).
DCNET 2017 - 8th International Conference on Data Communication Networking
34
Figure 1: Communication Model for the forward link.
Figure 2: Communication Model for the return link.
A representative block diagram of the general sys-
tem architecture is provided for both DVB-S2 (used in
forward link) and DVB-RCS links in (ETSI, 2005b)
and (ETSI, 2005a) (used in return link) and shown
in Figure 1 and Figure 2 respectively. All the func-
tional blocks impact on the overall performance and
contribute to the determination of the Signal to Noise
Ratio (SNR) thresholds for the link budget.
3 SERVICE OVERVIEW AND
CHANNEL DESIGN
In order to perform an exhaustive analysis, we con-
sider a distribution of 2200 terminals, distributed ran-
domly in Italy with the aim to cover all possible terri-
tory specific characteristic. For instance, rain models
and other parameters considered hereafter, may de-
pend on geographical location of the terminal. Each
terminal location will be used in all the next calcula-
tions and simulations for the service evaluation. As a
baseline reference, the typical values for the current
commercial Ka-band terminals were used: G
R
=42 dB
and EIRP = 48 dBW (EUTELSAT, 2016). The nomi-
nal IP bandwidth that can be exploited by a Ka-band
terminal by these characteristics can be evaluated tak-
ing into account three main parameters:
- Link availability (%);
- Carrier Symbol Rate (kbit/s);
- Selected Modulation and Coding scheme (MOD-
COD).
Link availability indicates the link uptime over the
year, and it is usually fixed to a target value agreed
with users in the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
The dimensioning of the system envisages first the
determination of a reference link availability %, and
then the tuning of the best combination of other pa-
rameters (such as transmitter power, antenna gain,
etc.). Satellite commercial systems typically provide
connectivity based services with 99.7% of availabil-
ity. Of course, most critical services could require
higher values. For these reasons, in the analysis
presented hereinafter, values either equal or higher
than 99.7% will be considered. Table 1 summarizes
the channel breakdown (bandwidth allotment) on the
Athena Fidus transponder. For each channel the main
parameters impacting the link budget computation are
Feasibility of 5G Services Over Ka-band Athena-Fidus Satellite - A Study on Ka-band Frequency Use for 5G based Applications Over
Satellite
35
reported. In the present study, the star-based network
architecture is considered as a baseline, where Athena
Fidus makes use of a common broadband forward
link, whereas a shared return link is used by many
remote peers along the territory in time division.
The single carrier (broadcast) forward channels
are number 16 and 18, with 75 and 125 MHz band-
widths respectively, making use of DVB-S2 standard.
Then, Athena Fidus offers many carriers to be used in
time division (DVB-RCS) or as exclusive access: the
combination of channel 15 and 17, is in fact further
divided into three classes ((1), (2) and (3) in table 1).
Depending on the supported symbol rate/bandwidth
per channel, this allows to create many narrowband
links, with an overall bandwidth of about 200 MHz.
For each channel class, in fact, a different number
of carriers is defined (last column) and, as reported
in Table 2, a different respective bandwidth in MHz.
Definitively, the Athena Fidus terminals will be as-
sociated to only one of such carriers for the return
link, and each single carrier can be associated to mul-
tiple terminals competing for the carrier bandwidth
as defined by multiple access techniques required by
DVB-RCS standard. Multiple access (TDMA) is nor-
mally enforced on channel 15+17(1), while the other
2 classes can be used also without contention (one
carrier per terminal).
Once the channels are defined, the Ka-band propa-
gation models (ITU-R, 2007a), (Rytir, 2009), (ITU-R,
2007b), (ITU-R, 2005), (ITU-R, 1999) can be applied
to assess the attenuation margin as a function of the
terminal coordinates/altitude above the sea level and
of the target availability. Taking as a reference the
Athena Fidus coverage, the two frequencies f
1
=19.8
GHz and f
2
=29.4 GHz are considered as reference for
downlink and uplinks, respectively.
Table 1: Athena Fidus channel repartition.
Channel # Connectivity
F
UP
F
DOW N
Carrier
(MHz) (MHz)
15+17(1)
Star return
29600 19520 10
(DVB-RCS)
15+17(2)
Star return
29600 19520 144
(DVB-RCS)
15+17(3)
Star return
29600 19520 116
(DVB-RCS)
16
Star forward
29427.5 19887.5 1
(DVB-S2)
18
Star forward
29302.5 19762.5 1
(DVB-S2)
Figure 3 shows the attenuation due to propagation
effects in the downlink as a function of the terminal
number (1-2200). For a severe availability require-
ment of 99.9%, the attenuation varies in the range 6-
10 dB. It is reminded that the x-axis represent the ter-
Table 2: Athena Fidus channel characteristics.
Channel #
Symbol
Roll-Off
BW per EIRP G/T
Rate carrier density (dB/K)
(MSym/s) (MHz) (dBW/MHz)
15+17(1) 1.9 0.35 2.565 28 9
15+17(2) 0.64 0.35 0.864 28 9
15+17(3) 0.32 0.35 0.432 28 9
16 60 0.25 75 32.5 10
18 100 0.25 125 32.5 10
minal id, from 1 to 2200, randomly positioned in the
Italian territory. Through the simulations it was noted
that the higher attenuation values are encountered for
terminal installations in North-East of Italy. With a
lower availability requirement (i.e. 99.5%), the atten-
uation value drops below 5 dB.
Figure 3: Ka-band attenuation for f = f
1
= 19.8 GHz.
Figure 4 shows the attenuation margin for the up-
link at f
2
=29.4 GHz. Overall values are significantly
higher than those obtained for f
1
. This is due to
the greater dependence on rain fading within this fre-
quency range.
Figure 4: Ka-band attenuation for f = f
2
= 29.4 GHz.
To conlcude, a detailed analysis of “non-linear
losses” in Athena Fidus is provided in (Iorio et al.,
DCNET 2017 - 8th International Conference on Data Communication Networking
36
2012). The main loss contributions are due to High
Power Amplifiers (HPA) distortions, up-conversion
and down-conversion, Input-Multiplexed (IMUX)
and Output-Multiplexer (OMUX) filters. The main
degradation contributions are summarized in Table 3
and are used for the simulations: they can be com-
bined in Root Sum Square in order to achieve the
overall attenuation value due to non-linear effects.
Table 3: Summary of Athena Fidus non-linear degradations.
Impact of Degradations [dB]
Channel ModCod
Carrier BW AM/AM Phase Group delay Amplitude
(MHz) AM/PM noise variation variation
Fwd link QPSK 1/2
75
0.3 0.01 0.34 0.1
Ka-band 8PSK 3/4 0.49 0.05 0.93 0.34
4 LINK BUDGET RESULTS
All the parameters discussed in Section 3 have been
modelled and integrated in a MATLAB simulator
aimed to compute link budget for both return and for-
ward link of the target system, at all possible satel-
lite links configurations. Relevant propagation mod-
els and ITU standards have been considered, specifi-
cally considering the attenuation margins achieved by
previous simulations. The goal of the proposed analy-
sis is to determine, given a certain degree of availabil-
ity associated to a specific service, the useful channel
capacity (in terms of available bit/s), which is indi-
cated as C
IP
.
Before computing link budget, the target signal-
to-noise ratio (ideal SNR
0
), to be used as lower-
bound threshold for the link budget, were determined
as a function of the eligible coding and modulation
schemes and real channel choices. This in turns al-
lows to determine the associated value of capacity
exploitable at the IP level (C
IP
) to support 5G ser-
vices. In particular, the link budget requirements for
a specific carrier are described in the next sections by
means of:
- Mode - MODCOD reference for possible choice
of “Modulation scheme” and “coding rate”;
- Target (ideal) E
b
/N
0
- (as obtained from standards
and test results found in literature, i.e. (ETSI,
2009));
- Spectral Efficiency (η) - transmitted bits per
Hertz computed as ratio between IF capacity
and channel bandwidth (C = SR × R
c
× log
2
(M),
SR =Symbol Rate, R
c
=overall coding rate,
M=number of modulation symbols);
- Target (ideal) SNR
0
- signal to noise ratio com-
puted as E
b
/N
0
+ η[dB]+ SR[dB];
The simulations will allow to identify the MOD-
COD to use according to the required availability, for
each of the channel identified, and then derive the as-
sociated C
IP
(Mbit/s), which is the capacity available
at the IP layer (excluding IP encapsulation overhead
with Generic Stream Encapsulation GSE). The re-
quired SNR
0
for decoding and attenuation are eval-
uated for each of the 2200 terminals for all possible
channel configurations.
4.1 Return Link
4.1.1 Link Budget Requirements and
Calculation of the Nominal Capacity
Considering the channel pool characterized by a sym-
bol rate of 320 kSym/s (carrier 15+17(3)), the maxi-
mum throughput allowed at the IP level is below 400
kbit/s, as summarized in Table 4. This rate is suffi-
cient to set up low data rate services such as messag-
ing, Voice over IP (VoIP), small file transfer, small
data M2M and sensor networks data exchange. Any-
way, this configuration has not been considered for
the link budget computation because the paper is fo-
cused more in detail for higher data rate capabilities,
which are the most critical to be achieved as well
as the most attractive for upcoming 5G services. If
adopting bandwidth on demand (BoD) techniques, as
described in DVB-RCS standard, the broader chan-
nels (such as, 15+17(1)) can be used to provide these
narrowband services in a sharing mode, more effi-
ciently.
Table 4: DVB-RCS link budget requirements for 320
ksym/s channels.
Mode
Ideal Spectral Ideal C
IP
E
b
/N
0
[dB] efficiency (η) SNR
0
[dB] (kbit/s)
QPSK 1/2 4.5 0.57 57.14 213
QPSK 2/3 5 0.76 58.89 284
QPSK 3/4 5.5 0.86 59.9 320
QPSK 5/6 6 0.95 60.86 356
QPSK 7/8 6.4 1.0 61.47 373
Table 5 summarizes requirements and associated
maximum capacity available at the IP layer over chan-
nels with symbol rate equal to 640 ksym/s (15+17(2)).
The allowed IP capacity ranges from 427 to 747
kbit/s depending on the selected MODCOD. Such
values are compliant with application requirements
of medium data rate such as real time video stream-
ing, file transfer, web browsing, distributed monitor-
ing (Carniato et al., 2013). In fact, the obtained data
rates are comparable with the ones experienced in the
common ADSL return link, allowing satellite either to
offload traffic coming from congested terrestrial net-
Feasibility of 5G Services Over Ka-band Athena-Fidus Satellite - A Study on Ka-band Frequency Use for 5G based Applications Over
Satellite
37
works or to backup terrestrial links during failures or
outages.
Table 5: DVB-RCS link budget requirements for 640
kSym/s channels.
Mode
Ideal Spectral Ideal C
IP
E
b
/N
0
[dB] efficiency (η) SNR
0
[dB] (kbit/s)
QPSK 1/2 4.5 0.57 60.1 427
QPSK 2/3 5 0.76 61.9 569
QPSK 3/4 5.5 0.86 62.9 641
QPSK 5/6 6 0.95 63.8 712
QPSK 7/8 6.4 1.0 64.4 747
Finally, Table 6 concerns requirements for con-
nectivity over 1.9 MSym/s channels (15-17(1)). Of
course, requirements in terms of C/N
0
are more se-
vere, while the allowed IP capacity is much higher:
from 1.2 Mbit/s up to more than 2 Mbit/s. With data
rates in this range even wideband services such as HD
TV can be provided. Also this configuration is con-
sidered for link budgets.
Table 6: DVB-RCS Link Budget Requirements for 1.9
MSym/s Channels.
Mode
Ideal Spectral Ideal C
IP
E
b
/N
0
[dB] efficiency (η) SNR
0
[dB] (kbit/s)
QPSK 1/2 4.5 0.57 64.87 1268
QPSK 2/3 5 0.76 66.62 1691
QPSK 3/4 5.5 0.86 67.63 1903
QPSK 5/6 6 0.95 68.59 2114
QPSK 7/8 6.4 1.0 69.2 2220
4.1.2 Link Budget Analysis
Figure 5 shows results of link budget calculations for
the whole set of terminals in terms of SNR
0
, obtained
by setting the transmitting antenna gain at 42 dB.
Note that the results for different gain values of the
antenna (in dB) can be immediately obtained by lin-
early up or down shifting the curves. The terminals
on the abscissa are ordered from the lowest to the
highest SNR
0
and the curves are obtained accordingly.
Furthermore, the coloured curves are associated with
different values of link availability selected for the
link budget spanning from 99.3% (yellow curve) up
to 99.9% (blue curve).
Finally, SNR
0
thresholds for the different coding
schemes supported in the DVB-RCS standard, ac-
cording to Table 5, are represented by dashed lines.
Therefore curves, or portions of a curve, below the
lowest threshold (related to QPSK 1/2 scheme) indi-
cate that the corresponding terminals do not respect
the target availability requirement. On the other hand,
every terminal can efficiently work, respecting the tar-
get availability requirement when the relevant curve
is above at least one threshold. Of course, each ter-
minal will use the most efficient MODCOD in case
overcoming more than one threshold. For presenta-
tion convenience, simulated terminals indicated in the
x-axis are ordered from the one with the lowest SNR
0
to that with the highest one. In this way, the number
of terminals below or above a given threshold can be
easily inferred.
With an availability of 99.9% (blue curve), almost
all terminals are not able to comply with the link bud-
get. A similar situation occurs with 99.8%, where
only about 20% of terminals are above the QPSK
1/2 threshold. Setting availability to 99.7% (typical
value exhibited for commercial services), all the ter-
minals satisfy link budget requirements. Almost 25%
of terminals can even use more efficient MODCODs,
thus working at rates up to 747 kbit/s. Finally, re-
sults improve even more when decreasing availability
requirements. For instance, with 99.3% all terminals
can work at a maximum rate higher than 700 kbit/s.
Figure 6 shows results when considering the high-
est capacity channels of 1.9 MSym/s. In order to guar-
antee that all the terminals satisfy link budget require-
ment, the target availability must go down to 99%.
For higher values (i.e. 99.5%) only a small subset
of terminals complies. On the other hand, while link
budget respects the requirements, the amount of ca-
pacity available at the IP layer is much higher than
the one allowed with the 640 ksym/s channel (in any
configuration). In fact, with availability of 99% all the
terminals can transmit at a maximum rate of at least
1.26 Mbit/s, while about 200 (10% of the total) termi-
nals can achieve up to 1.69 Mbit/s. As a general con-
clusion, these broad channels can be used for broad-
band applications that do not require commercial-like
availability.
4.2 Forward Link - Channel #16
In this section, communication on the forward link
over channel #16, characterized by parameters re-
sumed in the Table 1 and Table 2, is specifically ad-
dressed. DVB-S2 standard is adopted, enabling a
large number of combinations among modulation and
coding schemes.
4.2.1 Link Budget Requirements and
Calculation of the Nominal Capacity
For each MODCOD, the link budged requires a dif-
ferent SNR to be achieved to guarantee target perfor-
mance as shown in Table 7.
4.2.2 Link Budget Analysis
Target SNR
0
values are taken as thresholds to be com-
pared to values achieved through link budget compu-
DCNET 2017 - 8th International Conference on Data Communication Networking
38
Figure 5: Link budgets for 640 kSym/s carriers.
Figure 6: Link budgets for 1.9 MSym/s carriers.
tations related to all the terminals. Results are shown
in Figure 7. With a high availability of 99.9%, the
totality of terminals closes the link budget above the
lower threshold (related to QPSK 1/4) so that connec-
tivity requirement is always respected, giving at IP
layer a capacity of at least 28 Mbit/s. In fact, most
of the terminals are in conditions to work with QPSK
1/2, thus with a net IP capacity of 38 Mbit/s. Setting
a slightly lower availability requirement (i.e. 99.5%),
terminals can use a MODCOD much more efficient
such as the QPSK 5/6 and then exploiting a capacity
of about 95 Mbit/s. In conclusion, the forward link
does not present any particular issue in the considered
scenario. The receiving gain can be reduced of about
8-9 dB (with respect to the reference value), saving
target performance.
4.3 Forward Link - Channel #18
The analysis carried out for channel #16 has been
replicated considering the Channel #18 configuration,
shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
4.3.1 Link Budget Requirements and
Calculation of the Nominal Capacity
Table 8 presents the summary of the link budget re-
quirements and the available capacity at the different
protocol layers for all the allowed MODCODs.
4.3.2 Link Budget Analysis
Results, shown in Figure 8, are very similar to those
experienced in the previous forward link configura-
Feasibility of 5G Services Over Ka-band Athena-Fidus Satellite - A Study on Ka-band Frequency Use for 5G based Applications Over
Satellite
39
Figure 7: Link budgets on forward link with Channel #16.
Figure 8: Link budgets on forward link with Channel #18.
tion, in terms of SNR
0
. Of course, Channel #18 al-
lows the achievement of much higher overall rates,
once fixed the SNR.
5 CONCLUSION
This paper highlights the Athena Fidus potentialities
to play an important role in the provision of the up-
coming 5G services. The current configuration of
Athena Fidus and its peculiar characteristics, can al-
low the simultaneous support to a number of services
with difference performance requirements. Two pa-
rameters must properly analyzed in order to fully sat-
isfy 5G application requirements: the maximum eligi-
ble capacity and the link availability. After an exten-
sive simulation campaign using the actual configura-
tion and parameters of Athena Fidus, which is already
operational, achievable IP throughput have been eval-
uated for both forward and return links. Results con-
firmed Athena Fidus flexibility on tuning link char-
acteristics and then achieve the most suitable con-
figuration to support state-of-the art 5G applications.
This work represents a first theoretical and thorough
analysis of the Athena Fidus channels available to-
day, for which complete details on the service spec-
ifications are lacking in literature. The satellite has
been launched and it is fully activated: the commer-
cial services are becoming operational in the current
days. The authors are willing to compare the re-
sults achieved in this paper by measures resulting by
real installations, using some test modems distributed
on the national territory in areas identified through
simulations by peculiar propagation conditions. Fur-
thermore, it will be important to test new transmis-
sion protocols and innovative approaches oriented to
DCNET 2017 - 8th International Conference on Data Communication Networking
40
Table 7: DVB-S2 Link Budget Requirements for Channel
#16.
Mode
Ideal Spectral Ideal C
IP
E
b
/N
0
[dB] efficiency (η) SNR
0
[dB] (Mbit/s)
QPSK 1/4 -2.35 0.49 75.43 28.53
QPSK 1/3 -1.24 0.65 76.54 38.04
QPSK 2/5 -0.3 0.78 77.48 45.64
QPSK 1/2 1 0.98 78.78 57.06
QPSK 3/5 2.23 1.18 80.01 68.47
QPSK 2/3 3.1 1.32 80.88 76.08
QPSK 3/4 4.03 1.48 81.81 85.59
QPSK 4/5 4.68 1.58 82.46 91.29
QPSK 5/6 5.18 1.65 82.96 95.1
QPSK 8/9 6.2 1.76 83.98 101.44
QPSK 9/10 6.42 1.78 84.2 102.7
8PSK 3/5 5.5 1.77 83.28 102.7
8PSK 2/3 6.62 1.98 84.4 114.12
8PSK 3/4 7.91 2.22 85.69 128.38
8PSK 5/6 9.35 2.47 87.13 142.65
8PSK 8/9 10.69 2.64 88.47 152.16
8PSK 9/10 10.98 2.67 88.76 154.06
16APSK 2/3 8.97 2.63 86.75 152.16
16APSK 3/4 10.21 2.96 87.99 171.18
16APSK 4/5 11.03 3.16 88.81 182.59
16APSK 5/6 11.61 3.3 89.39 190.2
16APSK 8/9 12.89 3.52 90.67 202.88
16APSK 9/10 13.13 3.56 90.91 205.41
32APSK 3/4 12.73 3.7 90.51 213.97
32APSK 4/5 13.64 3.95 91.42 228.24
32APSK 5/6 14.28 4.11 92.06 237.75
32APSK 8/9 15.69 4.39 93.47 253.6
32APSK 9/10 16.05 4.45 93.83 256.77
Table 8: DVB-S2 Link Budget Requirements for Channel
#18.
Mode
Ideal Spectral Ideal C
IP
E
b
/N
0
[dB] efficiency (η) SNR
0
[dB] (Mbit/s)
QPSK 1/4 -2.35 0.49 77.65 47.55
QPSK 1/3 -1.24 0.65 78.76 63.4
QPSK 2/5 -0.3 0.78 79.7 76.08
QPSK 1/2 1 0.98 81 95.1
QPSK 3/5 2.23 1.18 82.23 114.12
QPSK 2/3 3.1 1.32 83.1 126.8
QPSK 3/4 4.03 1.48 84.03 142.65
QPSK 4/5 4.68 1.58 84.68 152.16
QPSK 5/6 5.18 1.65 85.18 158.5
QPSK 8/9 6.2 1.76 86.2 169.07
QPSK 9/10 6.42 1.78 86.42 171.18
8PSK 3/5 5.5 1.77 85.5 171.18
8PSK 2/3 6.62 1.98 86.62 190.2
8PSK 3/4 7.91 2.22 87.91 213.97
8PSK 5/6 9.35 2.47 89.35 237.75
8PSK 8/9 10.69 2.64 90.69 253.6
8PSK 9/10 10.98 2.67 90.98 256.77
16APSK 2/3 8.97 2.63 88.97 253.6
16APSK 3/4 10.21 2.96 90.21 285.3
16APSK 4/5 11.03 3.16 91.03 304.32
16APSK 5/6 11.61 3.3 91.61 317
16APSK 8/9 12.89 3.52 92.89 338.13
16APSK 9/10 13.13 3.56 93.13 342.36
32APSK 3/4 12.73 3.7 92.73 356.62
32APSK 4/5 13.64 3.95 93.64 380.4
32APSK 5/6 14.28 4.11 94.28 396.25
32APSK 8/9 15.69 4.39 95.69 422.67
32APSK 9/10 16.05 4.45 96.05 427.95
5G communications on the real satellite links, as in
(Luglio et al., 2009a), (Cataldi et al., 2009) and (Ab-
delsalam et al., 2015),(Abdelsalam et al., 2017).
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