Abstract-Multi-mode satellite terminals are actually the most desired devices on the market, thanks to their flexibility and suitability. A multi-mode radio communication terminal is a terminal allowing two or more transmission mode. In the last few years many research resources have been invested in the study of this new type of terminal. In this work, we define a multi-mode terminal as a terminal capable of communicating both with a Bent-Pipe (BP) satellite and with an On-Board Processor (OBP) satellite and dynamically setting its transmission parameters (e.g. transmission power and code rate). In order to realize this multimode functionality, the most suitable technology is the Software Defined Radio (SDR). The SDR is a set of Hardware and Software technologies that allow one to obtain reconfigurable architectures for network and wireless terminals. The goal of our work is to plan a satellite system based on Digital Video Broadcast with the Return Channel Satellite (DVB-RCS) standard in which the Return Channel Satellite Terminals (RCSTs) are able to adapt it to the channel state, configuring the transmission chain via software, respecting a certain Quality of Service (QoS) constraint on the Packet Error Rate (PER)
