What is Q/V-band?
Q/V-band refers to the millimetre-wave frequency bands above Ka-band: Q-band covers approximately 37.5–42.5 GHz and V-band covers 47.2–52.4 GHz. In the satellite industry, Q/V-band is emerging as the next frontier for gateway feeder links — the satellite-to-gateway links that connect the satellite to the terrestrial internet. By moving feeder links from Ka-band to Q/V-band, operators free up the entire Ka-band spectrum allocation for user beams, effectively doubling user-accessible capacity.
The rain fade challenge
At Q/V frequencies, atmospheric attenuation — particularly from rain — is far more severe than at Ka-band. A moderate rain event (25 mm/hour) causes 20–30 dB of additional path loss at V-band, compared to 10–15 dB at Ka-band. This means a standard Q/V-band link could become completely unavailable during heavy rainfall. The solution is site diversity: deploying multiple gateway stations separated by 50–150 km so that when one site is under heavy rain, others in clear sky conditions can carry the full traffic load.
Research and deployment
ESA's Alphasat satellite (2013) hosted Q/V-band propagation experiment payloads and collected propagation data across Europe for a decade, informing gateway diversity requirements. Eutelsat Konnect VHTS (2023) was one of the first commercial VHTS satellites to deploy Q/V-band gateway links operationally. The emerging IRIS² EU governmental satellite constellation is designed with Q/V-band feeder links as a baseline architecture element. The 3GPP NTN standard is also evaluating V-band for inter-satellite links in future LEO constellations.