New Receiver Will Boost Interplanetary Communication

If humans want to travel about the solar system, they’ll need to be able to communicate. As we look forward to crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, communication technology will pose a challenge we haven’t faced since the 1970s.

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3 light beams for a total of 10Gb/s

Tau.Neutrino said:

New Receiver Will Boost Interplanetary Communication

If humans want to travel about the solar system, they’ll need to be able to communicate. As we look forward to crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, communication technology will pose a challenge we haven’t faced since the 1970s.

more…

> We communicate with robotic missions through radio signals. It requires a network of large radio antennas to do this.

“Network” is the wrong word here. It only takes one dish at any one time. Multiple dishes are only for multiple missions and when the spacecraft is on the other side of the Earth.

> Human missions would require orders of magnitude more bandwidth.

Aguable. Human missions would like a lot more bandwidth, that’s for sure.

> A new study looks at an alternative. It uses visible light rather than radio.

This has been part of SETI for yonks. Looking for visible light communications. There are a advantages and disadvantages to visible light communications. Advantages of radio communications are that the universe is fairly radio quiet, and that radio transmitters require very little power per photon. Advantages of visible light are that it can be focussed really tightly and can be pulsed at really high (femtosecond) frequencies.

> While visible light can carry more data due to its shorter wavelengths, it also scatters more readily and loses fidelity over a shorter distance. To overcome this, the team proposes combining the signal with a second reference signal. The whole thing is then passed through a non-linear optical fiber, which generates a third signal known as an idler wave. All three of these are then amplified and sent on their way. On the other end, the signals are captured and processed. Because the idler wave depends on the other two signals, it can be used to reconstruct the original signal without much data loss. In lab experiments, the team reached a data-rate of more than 10Gb/s, which is ten times higher than current technology.

I like this work. I think it would work very well.

>“Network” is the wrong word here. It only takes one dish at any one time. Multiple dishes are only for multiple missions and when the spacecraft is on the other side of the Earth.

lot of communications employ duplicated systems, contingent routing capacity or whatever proper terms, in fact the internet uses it

of terrestrial radio various failure modes and interruptions are considered in link reliability analysis, fade from heavy rain or atmospheric ducting for example, and i’d expect same applies of links from earth into space

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

New Receiver Will Boost Interplanetary Communication

If humans want to travel about the solar system, they’ll need to be able to communicate. As we look forward to crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, communication technology will pose a challenge we haven’t faced since the 1970s.

more…

> We communicate with robotic missions through radio signals. It requires a network of large radio antennas to do this.

“Network” is the wrong word here. It only takes one dish at any one time. Multiple dishes are only for multiple missions and when the spacecraft is on the other side of the Earth.

> Human missions would require orders of magnitude more bandwidth.

Aguable. Human missions would like a lot more bandwidth, that’s for sure.

> A new study looks at an alternative. It uses visible light rather than radio.

This has been part of SETI for yonks. Looking for visible light communications. There are a advantages and disadvantages to visible light communications. Advantages of radio communications are that the universe is fairly radio quiet, and that radio transmitters require very little power per photon. Advantages of visible light are that it can be focussed really tightly and can be pulsed at really high (femtosecond) frequencies.

> While visible light can carry more data due to its shorter wavelengths, it also scatters more readily and loses fidelity over a shorter distance. To overcome this, the team proposes combining the signal with a second reference signal. The whole thing is then passed through a non-linear optical fiber, which generates a third signal known as an idler wave. All three of these are then amplified and sent on their way. On the other end, the signals are captured and processed. Because the idler wave depends on the other two signals, it can be used to reconstruct the original signal without much data loss. In lab experiments, the team reached a data-rate of more than 10Gb/s, which is ten times higher than current technology.

I like this work. I think it would work very well.

Unless … I did come across a proposal while with CSIRO, to run a signal through a non-linear crystal to improve communications. When I looked at it in detail, the whole thing was total crap as there was no way to reconstruct a non-distorted signal from the distorted one.