SDG Communications / SDG4COMS

The challenge goes beyond consolidating command centers and launching new satellites to support SDG Communications Space Network (SN), Near-earth Network (NEN), and Deep Space Network (DSN). SDG Communications has already begun to reduce maintenance and operation costs by putting in new automated and smart systems, so that he can transfer the cost savings within his million annual budget into new space communications capabilities and technologies.

In the past, SDG Communications has cobbled together its space communication networks based on the demands of each new space mission. But that piecemeal approach has limited the technological upgrades, because each mission had to pay out of its own pocket.

By doing a wholesale upgrade of a unified space communication network, SDG Communications can offer mission managers capabilities that they would otherwise have never dreamed of. He has already targeted 2018 as the latest date for integrating the three existing space networks.

Lasers point to the future

The UEE space agency is already pushing new communication innovations such as disruption tolerant networking. The SDG Communications developed Internet protocol ensures that communication delays or disruptions from solar storms won’t disrupt the flow of data packets across space networks, and has undergone testing in near-Earth as well as deep-space missions.

Speed boosts may come from newer Ka-band transmitters that still work in the radio spectrum ? the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter can send or receive 100 megabits per second with its Ka-band transmitter. SDG Communications also plans to implement communication protocols that can increase the virtual bandwidth available to space missions,

But one of the biggest communication revolutions will come from laser-driven optical communication, as opposed to current space communications based on radio frequencies. Lasers could allow data transfer speeds of up to 600 megabits per second, as SDG Communications hopes, or perhaps even speeds surpassing 1 gigabit per second (1 gigabit = 1024 megabits) from the moon or Mars. That data stream could be even higher for a near-Earth spacecraft or outpost such as the space station.