New generation of Galileo Satellites are intended to provide high TT&C performances in terms of flexibility and link robustness. The new S-Band Transponder (SBAT) shall be capable to operate in secure mode through all the different mission phases, under the different S/C configurations and for the different TT&C modes.
When On-Station and in Nominal configuration, the SBAT shall support also sufficient data throughput to manage the expected future next generation constellation satellites including  also Inter Satellite Links (ISL).
As a consequence, the SBAT shall support:

• on-board flexibility with accommodation of different TC/TM data rates,
• data rate increased with respect to the current IOV/FOC TT&C link,
• spectrum monitoring, interference detection & cancellation,
• accommodation of more powerful data encoding scheme for forward error correction (FEC) with interface optimisation towards security unit and on-board computer.

The implementation of the data decoding (up-link FEC) and encoding (downlink FEC) function inside the SBAT allows to simplify (with respect IOV/FOC) the Communication Subsystem processing and signal routing between the S-band transponder, the security unit and on-board computer.
Backward compatibility with current IOV/FOC subsystem is also supported.