Conference Program

Room: Princes Ballroom

Welcome by Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire Combined Authority, UK.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Keynote 1: ARTEMIS Mission Update, by Steve Creech Moon to Mars Program Office Deputy, NASA, USA.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Plenary Panel 1, Artemis: Advancing Game Changing Communications and Navigation Technology, chaired by Badri Younes, Senior Advisor on Communications and Navigation Capabilities, Operation and Technology, NASA, USA.

The panel will focus on Artemis: Advancing Game Changing Communications and Navigation Technology. Panelists will include Senior Technologists and Senior Managers from Major Aerospace Corporations and Space Agencies. They will be discussing both their future needs and technology development efforts underway to meet those needs along with insight to their organizations plans for the future.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Keynote 2: Communication and navigation services for lunar missions: the ESA Moonlight program, presenter, Pietro Giordano, Radio Navigation Department, ESA, The Netherlands.

Lunar communication and navigation services are more critical than ever before, as we prepare for an unprecedented surge of lunar missions in the next decade. Over 200 missions are currently planned to explore the Moon, from scientific research to human exploration and institutional missions to commercial ventures. However, relying on dedicated communication relay missions for each lunar mission is not sustainable. Developing a robust communication and navigation infrastructure on the Moon is essential to support these missions and unlock the full potential of lunar exploration. This keynote will present the ESA Moonlight programme which aims to provide communication and navigation services, by means of a dedicated lunar satellite constellation. Moonlight will unlock the potential for future Lunar missions, enabling more data through high-rate low latency communication, better and safer landing and navigating capabilities and less on-board complexity.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Plenary Panel 2: 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for Lunar Communications and Navigation, chaired by Greg Heckler, Commercial Communications Services Division Director, SCaN Program, NASA, USA.

Under NASA's Artemis program, plans are underway to send the first woman and first person of color to the Moon within the next few years. Instead of solely developing, building, and operating communication and navigation infrastructure independently, NASA aims to collaborate extensively with commercial and international partners. While most people on Earth are familiar with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G mobile telecommunications technology, NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate and its Space Communications and Navigation office envision a lunar communications and navigation network that mirrors the cellular communication networks we use today.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Special Session on 10 years of Alphasat Aldo Paraboni Q/V Band Experiment, Mission Evolution and Results, chaired by Tommaso Rossi, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy, and Giorgia Parca, ASI, Italy.

The pioneering position of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in the analysis and verification of Ka-band and Q/V band propagation, acquired though Sirio and Italsat F1 missions, has been consolidated when ASI proposed to the European Space Agency (ESA) to host an experimental payload in Q/V band on board the Alphasat GEO satellite, successfully launched in July 2013. This payload (TDP5) has been named Paraboni in honor of Professor Aldo Paraboni (1940-2013) of Politecnico di Milano, pioneer of scientific research on the use of high frequencies in satellite communications. In these last ten years University of Rome Tor Vergata, Principal Investigator for ASI, and Johanneum Research, Principal Investigator for ESA, have performed Q/V-band satellite communication experiments with the objective to test and optimize system configurations, adaptive transmission schemes and propagation impairments mitigation techniques. The objective of this session is to gather papers form experimenters, operators and manufacturers working in the field of extremely high frequency (beyond Ka-band) satellite communications, in order to identify an updated vision of the state of the art and define short and long term scenarios.

Room: Wyvern

IC 1 - Non-Terrestrial Networks 1, Chair: Dilip S. Gokhale, Lockheed Martin Space, USA

Room: Forster Suite

IC 2 - Space Exploration & Services 1,  Chair: Max Scardelletti, NASA, USA

Room: Princes Ballroom

BroadSky Workshop (Part 1), chair Naoto Kadowaki, NICT, Japan.

A variety of activities related to Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) technologies for Beyond 5G/6G are being encouraged in many projects around the world. These activities encompass not only communications technologies, but also many other related technologies such as time synchronization and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for NTN. Business activities to establish an ecosystem for Beyond 5G/6G, including NTN, are also important. In this year’s BroadSky Workshop, we are focusing on various approaches to these activities. 

Room: Forster Suite

Ka 1 - Telecomm & Navigation for Space Exploration 1,  Chair: Denise Ponchak,Teltrium, USA.

Room: Wyvern

IC 3 - Non-Terrestrial Networks 2, Chair: Dilip S. Gokhale, Lockheed Martin Space, USA

Room: Pullman

IC 4 - QKD and Secure Satellite Communications, Chair: Nafiz Karabudak, Lockheed Martin, USA

Room: Princes Ballroom

BroadSky Workshop (Part 2), Chair: Naoto Kadowaki, NICT, Japan.

Room: Forster Suite

Ka 2 - Telecom & Navigation for Space Exploration 2, chair: Phil Liebrecht, Consultant, retired NASA, USA.

Room: Wyvern

IC 5 - Optical and High-Capacity Communications, Chair: Rob Singh, Axta Space Corp., USA

Room: Irving

9th ASAPE (Part 1), Co-chairs: Carlo Riva, Polytechnic of Milan, Italy and Antonio Martellucci, ESA, The Netherlands.

Future broadband satellite communication systems shall offer terabit capacity and very high data rates as requested by the current market both for broadcast and multimedia applications. The goal is to offer satellite-based solutions competitive to the ones provided by the terrestrial network, with in addition the ability to reach directly any end user, whichever his location. This requires the use of high carrier frequencies in the Ka or Q/V bands and beyond in order to achieve the large bandwidth requested.
The utilization of millimetric waves (Ka, Q, V bands and above) in satellite communications requires the use of Propagation Impairments Mitigation Techniques (PIMT) to counteract severe atmospheric phenomena without excessive power expenditures. The possibility to design and exploit profitably these techniques is based on the knowledge coming from the propagation science, i.e. on accurate models for the space- and time-distribution of attenuation and on measurements for their validation.

Room: Pullman

IC 6 - AI Based Techniques, Chair: Vuong Mai, University of Bradford, UK

Room: Forster Suite

Ka 3 - New Systems & Technology, Chair: Giuseppe Tomasicchio, Telespazio, Italy.

Room: Irving

9th ASAPE (Part 2) - Co-chairs: Carlo Riva, Polytechnic of Milan, Italy, and Antonio Martellucci, ESA, The Netherlands.

Room: Pullman

IC 8 - Antennas, Chair: Rajeev Gopal, Hughes Network Systems, USA

Conference Dinner and 2023 AIAA, Aerospace Communications Award - Midland Hotel

Room: Princes Ballroom

Panel Session on NASA Communication Services Project (CSP), Chaired by Peter J. Schemmel, Deputy Chief of Space Communications and Spectrum Management Office and Manager of Communications Services Project (CSP), NASA, USA.

The NASA Communication Services Project (CSP) is guiding NASA’s path to future near-Earth space communications capabilities by tapping commercial satellite service innovation to enable space missions of tomorrow. The agency is partnering with six commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) providers as they develop service offerings that can meet NASA’s as well as other organizations’ changing requirements. In this panel session, CSP partner organizations will discuss new opportunities for commercial SATCOM services and missions.

Room: Pullman

Ka 5 - Payload Technology, Chair: Nafiz Karabudak, Lockheed Martin, USA

Room: Forster Suite

IC 9 - Satellite Networks, Chair: Masaaki Kojima, NHK Science & Technology Research Las., Japan.  

Room: Wyvern

Ka 8 - Ground Systems & Networks, Chair: Thierry Abraham , Satixfy, Israel

Room: Irving

IC 10 - Interference/Fade Analysis and Mitigation, Chair: Christian Rohde, Fraunhofer IIS, Germany

Room: Pullman

Ka 6 - Propagation & Special Topics, Chair: James Nessel, NASA, USA and Carlo Riva, Polytechnic of Milan, Italy.

Room: Forster Suite

IC 11 - Satellite Payload & Receivers, Chairs: Glyn Thomas, Airbus Defence and Space, UK and Denise Ponchak, Teltrium Solutions, LLC, USA.

Room: Wyvern

Ka 9 - Analysis and Simulations, Chair: Naoto Kadowaki, NICT, Japan.

Room: Irving

IC 12 - Satellite System Protocols and Performance Analysis, Chair: Nader Alagha, ESA, The Netherlands

Room: Pullman

Ka 7 - Ground System & 5G  Networks, Chair: Barry Evans, University of Surrey, UK

Room: Forster Suite

IC 13 - Geolocation and Emerging Techniques, Chair: Daichi HIrahara, JAXA, Japan

Room: Wyvern

Ka 10 - Q/V Technology, Chair: Michael Zemba, NASA, US.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Plenary Panel 3:  Non-Terrestrial Networks, Systems and Services from 5G to 6G, Chair: Barry Evans, University of Surrey, UK.

The Panel will consider the current phase of integrating satellites into 5G networks for both backhaul and direct to Hand-Helds. It will also consider the services and technologies that are needed for satellites in a uniform 6G network. Topics to be considered include the following:

- NTN services in 5G and 6G

- Integration of satellites into 5G networks – direct to terminal and backhaul

- 3GPP standards and applications

- Spectrum and co-existence

- Role of satellites in 6G-3D space networks

- 6G technologies for 6G standards

Room: Princes Ballroom

ICSSC Best Paper Award by Ifiok Otung, 40th ICSSC Technical Chair.

Room: Princes Ballroom

Closing by Badri Younes and Rabindra Singh, 28th Ka and Broadband Conference and 40th ICSSC Conference Chairs.