ESA Open Invitation to Tender: 1-10673
Open Date: 05/04/2022 14:40 CEST
Closing Date: 21/06/2022 13:00 CEST

The objective of the activity is to develop smart gateway diversity techniques that minimize the impact of feeder link gateway switching across the protocol stack (physical, medium access control, network, transport and application layers). The techniques will be tested on typical broadband applications using a cross-layer protocol emulator driven by real multi-site propagation measurements. Targeted Improvements: Enabling feeder link gateway switching with minimum impact to the end user experience. Description: Reliable feeder links are a cornerstone of any satcom system. Very high throughput satellites (VHTS) in particular will rely on a feeder network operating in Extremely High Frequency (EHF) bands with poor propagation conditions. Smart gateway diversity is the fundamental technique that enables VHTS systems to offer high availability in the feeder links at these frequencies. The efficiency of the technique critically depends on the switching and handover dynamics between gateways, propagation conditions and resulting disruptions to higher layer protocols. Today’s state of the art site diversity techniques do not consider these constraints but assume ideal conditions. However, now, thanks to data from comprehensive European propagation campaigns, feeder link gateway switching with minimum impact on the end user experience can be addressed.Hence, this activity will develop smart gateway diversity techniques for feeder links above Ka-band based on available propagation data and various Concept of Operations (ConOps) scenarios. The ConOps will minimize the impact of feeder link gateway switching across the protocol stack (physical, medium access control, network, transport and application layers) and on the end user experience. This will take into account both distributed and centralized gateway architectures. To test the techniques the activity will develop a cross-layer protocol emulator capable of simulating the full end-to-end system, including the gateways, the satellite payload and the user terminal at various protocol layers. It will be representative of the network transit, switching losses and delays. The smart gateway diversity techniques and the resulting gateway handover will be implemented in the emulator. At the physical layer, the emulator will be driven by real fading data collected at various sites from the AlphasatTDP5 experiment. At the higher layers, the emulator will address topics such as buffer management, TCP congestion control and radio resource management.Footnote: On Delegation Request activities will only be initiated on the explicit request of at least one National Delegation.

Directorate: Directorate Telecom Integrated Applica
Estabilishment: ESTEC
ECOS Required: No
Classified: No
Price Range: > 500 KEURO
Authorised Contact Person: Claudia Ria Piesche
Initiating Service: TIA-TT
IP Measure: N/A
Prog. Reference: E/0534-01G – CC-AT 4.0.1
Tender Type: Open Competition
Open To Tenderers From: AT+BE+CA+CH+CZ+DE+DK+EL+ES+FI+FR+GB+HU+IE+IT+LU+NL+NO+PL+PT+RO+SE
Technology Keywords: 6-A-III-Networking Techniques
Products Keywords: 2-L-2-a-X-band, S-Band, Ka band,… / Near Earth application, Deep space application,…/ Platform vs Payload / 2-L-3-a-X-band, S-Band, Ka band,… / Near Earth application, Deep space application, … / Platform vs Payload / 2-L-2/3/4.1-m-Digital: Switching BB