Mars Exploration Aided by Intelligent Reflecting Surface

Abstract

In deep space communication, the traditional point-to-point communication technology has reached a bottleneck and no longer meets the requirements of deep space exploration missions, and the special difficulties faced by deep space communication and the corresponding key technologies are in urgent need of a new communication mode to solve and breakthrough, so the relay mode of communication is used in the exploration mission for Mars. The communication relay system of Mars exploration mission is mainly provided by Mars orbiting relay satellite with relatively short intermittent relay communication, which makes it very difficult to quickly establish the communication link between Mars relay satellite and Mars surface probe due to the fast satellite speed and complex environmental factors such as Mars surface terrain structure. Based on the above problems, this paper applies the intelligent reflective surface as a relay between the relay satellite and the Mars surface probe to the Mars exploration mission, and the intelligent reflecting surface can change the signal direction by configuring the phase shift of each unit to form a beam precisely aligned with the probe, which can achieve the purpose of bypassing obstacles and real-time tracking of the probe by the signal beam, improve the communication performance, and make the Mars exploration communication network more perfect and efficient.