Cassini Downlink Ka-Band Carrier Signal Analysis

Lower frequency telemetry bands are becoming more limited in bandwidth with more competition between flight projects and other entities. Higher frequency bands offer significantly more bandwidth and hence the prospect of much higher data rates. Future or prospective flight projects considering Ka-band (32-GHz) telemetry data links are interested in past flight experience with received Ka-band data. Over 10 years of Cassini closed-loop received Ka-band carrier data involving over 2 million individual measurements were acquired at all three Deep Space Network (DSN) sites. We analyzed these data to characterize link performance over a wide range of weather conditions and as a function of elevation angle. Based on this analysis, we have derived a recommendation for telecommunications link margin for preflight planning purposes. These results suggest that a 4-dB margin will ensure a 94 percent data return at a minimum 20-deg elevation angle under 90 percent weather conditions at 32 GHz (Ka-band).