Analysis of the ICE combiner for multiple antenna arraying

The passage of the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) through the tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner took place on September 11, 1985, at approximately 11:04 GMT. The signal-to-noise ratio of the data received from the ICE spacecraft during the comet encounter was improved by arraying the 64-m antenna channels A and B (RCP and LCP) with the two 34-m antennas. Specially designed combiners were built to combine the signals received by the three antennas at the different DSN sites to ensure that the spacecraft's weak signal was received. Although the ICE spacecraft was built with a 5-W transmitter and with a small antenna designed to provide data from no farther than 1 million miles, these combiners provided enough signal margin during the encounter to receive the ICE transmitted data from within the tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner, 44 million miles from earth.