SWIFT-HPX - High Data Rate Ka-band Commications for Small Satellites, Phase I

This SWIFT-HPX radio technology and resultant product supports the migration of small satellite and CubeSat near-Earth communication downlinks and intersatellite crosslinks to higher frequency links, which is consistent with Phase 1-3 of the SCaN Program. This technology and communcaiton solution will enable earth orbiting missions to be deliver more data, providing greater return on mission investments. In addition, this radio could also be used to provide Destination Relay capabilities for Lunar and Mars missions. One future development effort could focus on the slightly modifying the Ka-band antenna and RF front to allow it to communicate with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) network. TDRSS satellites 8-10 have a Ka-band Single Access (KaSA) service that is available to Space Network (SN) customers. Communications with TDRSS satellites 8-10 through the Ka-band Single Access (KaSA) service that is available to Space Network (SN) customers can provide up to 300Mbps (uncoded) of data on the downlink (return link), along with a up to 7Mbps of command data (forward link). Addition R/R&D would focus on improved link performance through antenna technology improvements by incorporating reflectarrays into the design as well as incorporating TUI's Canfield join gimbal for antenna pointing. There are a number of government, industry, and university class instruments and experiments that fly on small satellites (and CubeSats in particular) that produce significantly greater quantities of data that can be downlinked to the ground using UHF and S-band links. By moving the communication link to Ka-band, higher throughputs can be achieved due to higher gain apertures both in space and on the ground, as well as the greater availability of bandwidth allocations at these higher frequencies. The need for a high-throughput data crosslink and downlink has also been discussed with other government customers including DARPA, US Army, Air Force, and other government private customers. For some of these missions latency is a key factor, which may be addressed either through a private network of SWIFT-HPX radios that use disruption tolerant networking (DTN) techniques to quickly deliver the data from the collecting spacecraft, through intersatellite links to other spacecraft that are in communication with a ground station. Alternately, tuning the antenna and radio to TDRSS frequencies may would leverage NASA's Space Network to provide this low-latency high througput data link. More »