Ka-band Link Budget Analysis for Deep Space Communications
Date
2025
Authors
Islam, M.S.
Sultana, J.
Lawrence, N.P.
Pereira, A.T.
Salamon, S.J.
Dinovitser, A.
Nguyen, T.D.
Velazco, J.E.
Ng, B.W.H.
Tansu, N.
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Journal article
Citation
IEEE Access, 2025; 13:159064-159076
Statement of Responsibility
Md. Saiful Islam, Jakeya Sultana, Nicholas P. Lawrence, Aaron T. Pereira, Stephen J. Salamon, Alex Dinovitser, Thien Duc Nguyen, Jose E. Velazco, Brian W.-H. Ng, Nelson Tansu, Frederick W. Menk, Ed Kruzins, Neil H. E. Weste, Said F. Al-Sarawi, Derek Abbott
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Abstract
The emerging demand for increased data rates between Earth, the lunar gateway, Mars, and various other deep space probes will stretch existing deep space network (DSN) antennas beyond capacity. The DSN antennas distributed across Canberra, Madrid, and Goldstone are capable of tracking the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) travelling tens of millions of kilometers from Earth, and life extension efforts continue to support such critical space infrastructure. However, these legacy systems still suffer failures and outages that have resulted in delays in data communication and this situation continues to be a significant challenge. This explains the current interest in this area. Thus it is timely that we present a fresh tutorial on a link budget to Mars, elucidating use of the latest ITU-R model recommendations for propagation through the Earth’s atmosphere. To facilitate communication to Mars, we target a downlink frequency in the K a band (31.8–32.3 GHz) as it allows for increased data transmission rate, increased effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) and reduced antenna size. In this tutorial paper, we therefore focus on a link budget in the K a band and take into account all major sources of attenuation including free space path loss (FSPL), rain, fog, and system noise temperature ( Tsys ), which are critical for ensuring a positive link margin. As a case study, the presented link budget uses parameters for actual MRO communications and the Canberra DSN antenna assuming communication from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to the Canberra DSN-DSS-35. For point of comparison, we compare this with the case of Lunar to Earth communications.
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©2025 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/