Feasibility of 5G services over Ka-band athena-fidus satellite: A study on ka-band frequency use for 5G based applications over satellite

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 management 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 objective is to draw the operational context to be considered for the potential involvement of Athena Fidus in the next communication systems. © Copyright 2017 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved.