Citation
Abstract
Multiple-Antenna Reception (MAR) is a technique for coherently adding the spacecraft signals received at two or more antennas in order to achieve an improvement in down-link telemetry performance. The feasibility was recently demonstrated at the second Mercury Encounter of Mariner 10. The data rate for this demonstration was a lusty 117 kbps uncoded. At this data rate, the received carrier signal is strong enough at each of the receiving sites that there is negligible loss due to noise in the carrier-tracking loops. The MAR technique could also be used to enhance the data return from the outer planet Pioneer and Mariner probes, in which case the data rates are, or can become, low enough that the effects of the noisy carrier references cannot be ignored. In the work which follows, previously developed tools for analyzing the effects of noisy carrier reference losses in the standard Deep Space Network configuration are applied to the MAR technique.
Details
- Volume
- 42-25
- Published
- February 15, 1975
- Pages
- 60–64
- File Size
- 341.5 KB