Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Markley, Richard W..
The purpose of this presentation is to identify major challenges involved in space ground communications networks to support space flight missions over the next 20 years. The presentation focus is on the Deep Space Network and its customers, but the forecast is applicable to all space ground communications networks.
In this report, high-rate ground communications are considered those that can support spacecraft data flow from the antenna to the mission operations center at rates higher than 10 Mbps.
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Data delivery in the Deep Space Network (DSN) involves transmission of a small amount of constant, high-priority traffic and a large amount of bursty, low priority data. The bursty traffic may be initially buffered and then metered back slowly as bandwidth becomes available. Today both types of data are transmitted over dedicated leased circuits. The authors investigated the potential of saving money by designing a hybrid communications architecture that uses leased circuits for high-priority network communications and dial-up circuits for low-priority traffic. Such an architecture may significantly reduce costs and provide an emergency backup. The architecture presented here may also be applied to any ground station-to-customer network within the range of a common carrier. The authors compare estimated costs for various scenarios and suggest security safeguards that should be considered.