PSATS 2011

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The third International ICST Conference on Personal Satellite Services 2011 (PSATS’11) was held at the Hotel Sol Principe, Malaga in Spain from the 17-18 of February 2011, jointly organized by University of Siena (Italy), University of Trento (Italy), University of Malaga (Spain), EUTELSAT (France), European Alliance of Innovation (EAI) and CERATE-NET Research Centre (Italy). The conference was also proudly supported by the European Commission’s technology platform the ‘Integral Satcom Initiative (ISI)’.

It is very much predicted that the next-generation satellite services will cater the demands of personal services by bringing the satellite terminals directly to the hands of the user. Technological advances in satellite communications have made it possible by reducing the overall cost as well as addressing many technological challenges such as supporting mobility, having miniaturized antennas and terminal sizes, and providing high data rate links. With the unique broadcast nature and ubiquitous coverage of satellite networks, the synergy between satellite and terrestrial networks provides immense opportunities for disseminating multimedia services to a wide range of audiences over large numbers of geographically-dispersed people. It is evident that the satellite will play a complementary, but essential, role in delivering multimedia and telecommunication services to infrastructure-less regions where the terrestrial high-bandwidth communication infrastructures are practically unreachable. PSATS 2011 conference explored such topics, bringing together academics, industries such as Avanti, Astrium, ESA, Selex, Telespazio, Thales, and Triagnosys, practitioners, and students interested in future techniques relating to the satellite communications, networking, technology, systems, and applications.

The conference was enriched with around thirty-six high quality technical papers and two keynote talks from Paul Febvre, the head of INMARSAT’s BGAN Evolution Team addressing on "Personal Satellite Access Terminals: Observations with a 40-year Perspective" and from Dr. Haitham Cruickshank a satellite communications expert from the University of Surrey addressing the issues related to "Satellite Communications Security with Current Status and Future Expectations". In addition there were three special sessions organized by Thales Alenia Space (Spain), the University of Bradford (UK), and the SatNEx III project, and a couple of invited talks from Eutelsat and ESA.

For the first time, this year, PSATS was organized outside Italy in Malaga (Spain) which is a very historic place with a rich painting culture a land surrounded by enchanting beaches. The organizing committee at-large, starting from the General Co-Chairs A/Prof. Claudio Sacchi (University of Trento, Italy)  and A/Prof. Giovanni Giambene (University of Sienna, Italy), the TPC Co-Chairs, Dr. Igor Bisio (University of Genoa, Italy) and Prof. Fun Hu (University of Bradford) all the way to the TPC members and the conference coordinator Aza Swedin (EAI) should be greatly congratulated for all the hard work leading towards the great success on PSATS’11.

Finally, we are proud to announce that PSATS’12 will be organized in UK during the same time of the year as the previous ones, and PSATS’13 is expected to reach the Asia-Pacific region Melbourne, Australia in 2013.

S. Kandeepan (CREATE-NET, Italy)

On behalf of the Steering Committee for PSATS