Communicating with microwave-propelled sails

Author

Bakim, I. Sezi ; Abdallah, Chaouki T. ; Schamiloglu, Edl

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., New Mexico Univ., Albuquerque, NM, USA

Volume

45

Issue

4

fYear

2003

Firstpage

111

Lastpage

122

Abstract

We describe a communication channel for a microwave-propelled sail, a novel concept for a deep-space scientific probe. We suggest techniques to recover the great loss introduced by the large distances, and we have conducted various simulations to understand the effects on the performance of the system. Possible disruption in the channel by high-energy solar flares, which increase the error in the estimation of the received signal, is accounted for. We developed the simulation for a full communication system on an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, including the random-time solar-flare disturbance. We show that turbo codes can be exploited that perform very well at low SNRs and have high coding gain.

Keywords

AWGN channels; decoding; microwave links; solar flares; space communication links; turbo codes; AWGN channel; QPSK; SNR; TDMA; additive white Gaussian noise channel; coding gain; communication channel; decoding; deep-space scientific probe; distance; high-energy solar flares; link budget; microwave-propelled sails communication; random-time solar-flare disturbance; received signal estimation error; simulations; system performance; turbo codes; AWGN; Acceleration; Chaotic communication; Clouds; Communication channels; Organic materials; Propulsion; Solar system; Space vehicles; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Propagation Magazine, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1045-9243

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MAP.2003.1241321

Filename

1241321