Deep Space Communication Channel Characteristics under Solar Scintillation

Abstract

Electromagnetic waves used for deep space communications are mainly affected by the charged particles ejected by the sun. These effects may result in degradation of communication quality or communication interruption. This paper discusses the effects of solar scintillation on electro-magnetic waves, including the scintillation index which is a measure of the intensity scintillation, the coherence bandwidth and the coherence time of deep space communication channel. The deep space communication channel under solar scintillation is modeled by using Rician fading channel according to the scintillation index. The coherence bandwidth will determine whether the channel is flat fading or frequency selective fading and the coherence time will determine whether the channel is slow fading or fast fading. The approach of choosing signal band width is determined by the coherence bandwidth and the coherence time with the change of the solar elongation angle. The simulation results show the bit error rate of the signal bandwidth chosen by the proposed approach is lower than a random choice.