Introduction

In this section, we are going to look at the different types of communication technologies which can be employed into our rover system. Communication is an extremely vital part for the construction of a successful Mars Rover. In order to prepare for human missions on Mars, rovers are constructed to collect useful information about the planet. This information in turn must be transmitted back to Earth or shared with other Mars based vehicles for further analysis. This is only possible if the communication infrastructure is well constructed. In this section, we shall discuss some of the applications and theories behind these technologies.

Types of Communication Technology

The rovers are required to transmit information between hardware within itself, between itself and other vehicles such as the mother ship and most importantly, between the mother ship and Earth-base infrastructure. Therefore, we must consider some long-haul data links as well as proximity networks for data transmission near the planet... Read more

Data Transmission

In the future we aim to produce an internet planetary network, IPN and it is going to be a predominant communication method between other planets and Earth. It acts as a network of disconnected internets, with Mars, lets say, being a sub-network within a greater network in Space. With the arrival of more Mars rovers in the future.. Read more

A Closer Look at Technologies for Backbone Networks

The backbone network must provide a high data rate transmission over a very long distance. Currently, data are transmitted using X-band frequency. This allows for a relatively low rate of data transmission compared with Ka-band. In the future, Ka band frequency RF equipments are to be employed. This band is used because... Read more

A Closer Look at Technologies for Proximity Networks

Rovers on a planet can communicate to the orbiters and also with other surface-based vehicles such as the mother ship. With the growing number of Mars Rovers sent from Mars, the communication between rovers, landers, orbiters and other vehicle on Mars become important because they can act as a network of rovers... Read more