Simulation of a Q/ V band satcom system featuring advanced fade mitigation techniques

Adaptive fade mitigation techniques such as Smart Gateway Diversity (SGD) are essential tools for mitigating the propagation impairments affecting the operation of HTS (High Throughput Satellite) and VHTS (Very High Throughput Satellite) systems at Ka-band and beyond. Specifically, the Q/Vband, which offers up to 5 GHz of available spectrum, is very attractive for future systems providing high data rate services, but it is extremely vulnerable to atmospheric attenuation, especially in rainy conditions. This paper presents a software simulation tool for the design and performance assessment of a Q/V-band SATCOM (Satellite Communication) system. The tool is composed by two main modules: 1) a physical model of the propagation channel based on numerical weather predictions (NWPs) plus a radiopropagation simulator cascaded with a temporal downscaling module and 2) a system simulator that operates SGD and classical fade mitigation techniques, i.e., uplink power control (ULPC) over the uplink and adaptive code and modulation (ACM) over the downlink. The SGD latency time turns out to be the fundamental parameter that bounds system performance (CNIR – Carrier to Noise plus Interference Ratio, data rate), when compared to an ideal system able to switchover the traffic in real-time. This contribution investigates the effects of different SGD latency times on such a SATCOM system at Q/V band.