The Communications Architectures and Research Section has a heritage of significant achievements in the development of new technologies for space communications and science: modulation schemes error-correcting codes, next-generation receivers, advanced signal processing, ground-based planetary radar, atomic clocks and other quantum technologies, and radio science.
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We develop and analyze new deep space telecommunications and networking architectures to support long-range planning for NASA's Deep Space Network and manage spectrum allocations. We develop new radio frequency and optical communications concepts that advance the state of the art and demonstrate them for infusion into operational ground and space systems of NASA missions and for DARPA and other agencies.
Our work has benefited a number of NASA projects: error-correcting codes for many missions for more than 30 years; advanced receiver technology for the Deep Space Network; data compression and proximity protocols for Mars Exploration Rovers and the Mars Science Laboratory; the Cold Atom Laboratory facility for the International Space Station; radio science for Cassini, Juno and GRAIL missions; solar system radar characterization and tracking of near-Earth objects and potential asteroid impacts.
Communications Architectures and Research performs research, development and standardization in the areas of source and channel coding including lossless and lossy compression of hyperspectral image cubes.
Uplink arraying technology employs three 34-meter antennas of NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex to provide the Deep Space Network with a high-power transmit capability for use in emergency situations.
The development of efficient networked communications enables new techniques in coordinated remote sensing between multiple science craft.
In the cell of the Cold Atom Laboratory’s physics package, laser cooling is used to transfer atomic vapor to an "atom chip” The atoms are further cooled to near absolute zero, forming a quantum gas enabling the study of fundamental physics phenomena.
JPL‘s quantum gravity gradiometer employs two identical atom interferometers that employ individual atoms as ideal drag-free test masses to achieve highly precise measurements of gravitational fields.
Radar images of asteroid, 2004 BL86, show that it has its own small moon. The images were produced by radar astronomers transmitting from NASA's 70-meter DSN antenna at Goldstone, CA, and receiving at the NSF’s 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in WV
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