The Alphasat satellite was launched on 25 July 2013. The Aldo Paraboni technology demonstration payload, funded by ASI under ESA's ARTES Programme, was embarked as an hosted payload on Alphasat. This Technology Demonstration Payload (identified as TDP5 and recently renamed Aldo Paraboni) was implemented under an ESA contract awarded in co-contractorship to Space Engineering and Thales Alenia Space Italia (TAS-I) which conceived the experimental mission and industrialised the subsystems. The Aldo mission is composed of two main elements: a Communication Experiment mission, which aims at assessing the performance of communication links at Q/V Bands; and a Scientific Experiment mission implemented through two beacons at Ka and Q Bands, which aims at characterizing propagation phenomena at these frequencies. During the In Orbit Test campaign of the above two mission components, TDP5 demonstrated compliance to the requirements and the nominal conditions of the Payload. The main topics of this paper are the description of the In Orbit Test requirements and the discussion of tests results. The good health of the Payload is demonstrated by the agreement of the results with the predictions that were calculated on the basis of the results of the on ground test campaign. The Commissioning and IOT campaign of Aldo Paraboni was performed over 3 distinct sessions: • Commissioning: 17-18 September 2013 • IOT Part 1: 10-18 October 2013 • IOT Part 2: 4-8 November 2013 This work is only related to the verification of the performance of the space segment, the Q/V-Band Payload, also referred to as the TDP5. TDP5 stands for Technical Demonstrator Payload #5 and it is formally the 5th experimental (i.e. technological demonstrator) hosted payload of the Alphasat programme

The growing development of standard Internet services and the emerging exploitation of several broadband multimedia contents disclosing in the last years, significantly promoted scenarios where Satellite Networks can play key roles. Several satellite networks are currently implemented according to the Digital Video BroadcastingReturn Channel via Satellite (DVB-RCS) standard, assuming to operate with a transparent satellite and an hubcentric (star) network topology.The present work addresses the SkyplexNet (SKN) system: an advanced Broadband Satellite Network for meshed connectivity developed by Alenia Spazio, within the framework of ESA Artes 3 -Line 1 Program, according to the DVB-RCS standard with duly extensions for the on-Board multiplexing capability of the Skyplex Units currently embarked on HotBird VI and W3A satellites. In this paper an architecture design study aiming at integrating the Medium Access Control (MAC) and Traffic Management (TM) functionality in a DVB-RCS like Network is presented. The envisaged Traffic Management schemes shall enable the SKN System to guarantee an adequate support of various Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and their application according to pre-defined Traffic Profiles established at connection set up phase with the support of physical medium access management functions.The functional architectures studied for the SKN Inter-Working Layer, from Internet protocols to SkyplexNet ones, and the SKN MAC layer have been also analysed on the interoperability level of these layers in order to deploy such functions as SKN connection mapping, packet scheduling and Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) policies.In this paper two different schemes of Traffic Management and MAC are presented reporting a detailed analysis of advantages and drawbacks of both approaches to be taken into account for future SkyplexNet system implementations.