Special Semaphore Scheme for UHF Spacecraft Communications

A semaphore scheme has been devised to satisfy a requirement to enable ultrahigh- frequency (UHF) radio communication between a spacecraft descending from orbit to a landing on Mars and a spacecraft, in orbit about Mars, that relays communications between Earth and the lander spacecraft. There are also two subsidiary requirements: (1) to use UHF transceivers, built and qualified for operation aboard the spacecraft that operate with residual-carrier binary phase-shift-keying (BPSK) modulation at a selectable data rate of 8, 32, 128, or 256 kb/s; and (2) to enable low-rate signaling even when received signals become so weak as to prevent communication at the minimum BPSK rate of 8 kHz. The scheme involves exploitation of Manchester encoding, which is used in conjunction with residual-carrier modulation to aid the carrier-tracking loop. By choosing various sequences of 1s, 0s, or 1s alternating with 0s to be fed to the residual-carrier modulator, one would cause the modulator to generate sidebands at a fundamental frequency of 4 or 8 kHz and harmonics thereof. These sidebands would constitute the desired semaphores. In reception, the semaphores would be detected by a software demodulator.