Millimeter Waves and High-Throughput Satellites: The New Frontier Toward Terabit Connectivity in the Sky

Today, connectivity is a pivotal aspect of our lives, basically a right of Humanity, and a fundamental ally towards a sustainable future. This calls for a disruptive, rather than evolutionary and predictable, approach for the definition of future space technologies and architectures. Based on the “connecting the unconnected” paradigm, these systems shall both supply a wider coverage and satisfy the ever increasing demand for larger capacities and cheaper services. In this framework, the enhanced system flexibility, reconfigurability, and sustainability to provide user-tailored services shall be a cornerstone in the design and definition of technologies and architectures for future Satellite Communications (SatCom) systems. In this Chapter, we explore several technologies and architectures for the next generation of space systems based on High Throughput Satellites and mmWaves. In fact, both the widespread use of mmWave links and HTS-based architectures could play a key role to make the magic blend for “connecting the unconnected” become a reality in the near future.