A Radio Link Close To Theoretical Limits

The radio link can bee seen as a revival of rather old technologies. The theoretical principles have been formulated thirty years ago by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Pasadena to be used in their telemetry systems for deep-space missions.

In these old days, this radically new and fully digital approach was implemented in the most powerful mainframe computers available. Nowadays, the hardware has shrunk to some 100 kg - still a respectable weight for a single channel radio receiver.

Thanks to the massive digital signal processing power, the system is abel to guarantee error-free data tranmission based on faint nanovolt signals picked up from the antenna array. And this super-sensitive "ear" would not suffer in performance, if it were collocated with the regions largest TV transmitter (continuously throwing 100 000 kilowatts of UHF-signal on the air). By the way, many of the receiver´s core components are Made in the USA.

Recomended literature about digital communications has been compiled under References.