Scientific operations of the W-band experiment during the DAVID satellite mission

DAVID (Data and Video Interactive Distribution) is a scientific mission of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Programme of Small Mission for Science and Technology. The DAVID satellite will be launched in 2004 in a low Earth orbit and will embark telecommunications experiments aimed at (1) the exploration of the W-band for a high capacity data transfer (Data Collection Experiment); (2) testing dynamic resource sharing techniques (Resource Sharing Experiment, RSE) for the optimal exploitation of the extremely high frequency satellite channel. In particular, the Data Collection Experiment (DCE), conceived by the University of Roma Tor Vergata, will pioneer the use of the W-band for transferring-in an interactive mode-at least 1 Gbyte of information data per satellite pass from remote (or virtually remote) locations to the Internet, by means of a hybrid network composed of the DAVID satellite, an inter-orbit-link between DAVID and the ESA geostationary satellite ARTEMIS, and the ARTEMIS ground stations.