Large Array Of Small Aperture Antennas For Effective Deep Space Communication
- Paper number
IAC-07-B2.6.10
- Author
Mr. Anurag Singh, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), India
- Coauthor
Dr. R.D. Gupta, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), India
- Year
2007
- Abstract
The telecommunications link between the Earth and spacecraft engaged in solar system exploration includes the Deep Space Network (DSN). This network consisting of large antennas works in two bands, namely, X-band and Ka-band, and is responsible for the delivery of telemetry to scientists from a multiplicity of spacecrafts currently on mission. There is a cluster of antennas at each of the three longitudes that make up the DSN and are located at Goldstone, California, U.S.A.; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia. Each cluster currently consists of some 34-m beam waveguide antennas and one 70-m Cassegrainian antenna. Although the current DSN configurations support existing mission scenarios, it has been suggested that future missions will desire both greatly increased data rates and higher capacity, and accordingly necessary upgradation has to be made to the ground system. The options typically available and considered include the construction of new large apertures, the development of even lower-noise receivers, the use of novel coding schemes and the development of higher-power uplinks or a combination of these. These options are costly and result in a capability that is an incremental improvement in the overall capacity of the DSN. Alternatively, a system that has an array of large number of small aperture antennas can be considered which will serve the twin objectives of cost effectiveness and increased downlink capacity to act as a replacement to 70-m antennas. The development of very large arrays of small aperture antennas has also been proposed as a way to increase the downlink capability of the NASA Deep Space Network by some factor of magnitude, thereby, enabling greatly increased science data from currently configured missions or enabling new mission concepts. In the present paper, the 6-m and 12-m diameter antenna large arrays have been critically examined and analyzed from the point of view of lower-noise receivers, higher-power uplinks, high effective area-to-noise temperature ratio/ sensitivity on the X-band and Ka-band with enhanced downlink data rate capacity by some factor to present maximum downlink capacity. Further, an improvement in the existing set up of arrays has also been proposed for more effective deep space communication.
- Abstract document