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University of York helps link Earth and deep space

Posted on 12 July 2005

Work at the University of York is helping to link Earth with deep space missions. Professor Alister Burr, Professor of Communications, and the Communications Research Group in the Department of Electronics, have been collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) on communications links with spacecraft on deep space missions.

He said: "Signals received from craft hundreds of millions of kilometres away, as in the recent Cassini-Huygens mission to investigate Saturn and its rings, moons and magnetic field, are so tiny that it is essential to design the most efficient signals possible."

The University of York has been evaluating the use of 'turbo-codes' to improve signal efficiency for future deep space missions.

Turbo-codes are digital error-correcting codes which Professor Burr and his team have been researching for some time. "Turbo-codes allow receivers to operate reliably with efficiency only slightly below the ultimate limit on communication system efficiency - known as the Shannon limit - and are around 40% more efficient than the codes used in previous missions. Professor Burr added: "In deep space missions, even a small improvement in efficiency can result in an increased range of tens or even hundreds of millions of kilometres.

"Our work can also help with the synchronisation problem for the telemetry and telecontrol wireless communication links - a problem that almost led to the failure of the Huygens mission."