Title:
A methodology to support relevant comparisons of Earth-Mars communication architectures
A methodology to support relevant comparisons of Earth-Mars communication architectures
Author(s)
Duveiller, Florence B.
Advisor(s)
Mavris, Dimitri N.
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Abstract
Because of the human imperative for exploration, it is very likely that a manned mission to Mars occurs by the end of the century. Mars is one of the two closest planets to Earth. It is very similar to the Earth and could be suitable to host a manned settlement. Sending humans to Mars is a technological challenge above all. Among the technologies needed, some of the most important relate to communications. Women and men on Mars need to be able to receive support from the Earth, communicate with other human beings on Earth and to send back the data collected. A reliable and continuous communication link has to be provided between Earth and Mars to ensure a safe journey to Mars. However, the communication between the Earth and Mars is challenging because of the distance between the two planets and because of the obstruction by the Sun that occurs for about 21 days every 780 days. Because of the cost of communication systems and the number of exploration missions to Mars, it has been established that a permanent communication architecture between the Earth and Mars is the most profitable option. From these observations, the research goal established for this thesis is to enable reliable and continuous communications between the Earth and Mars through the design of a permanent communication architecture. A literature review of the communication architectures between Earth and Mars revealed that a lot of concepts have been offered by different authors over the last thirty years. However, when investigating ways to compare the variety of existing architectures, it becomes very apparent that there were no robust, traceable and rigorous approach to do so. The comparisons made in the literature were incomplete. The requirements driving the design the architectures were not defined or quantified. The assumptions on which the comparisons are based were different from one architecture to another, and from one comparative study to another. As a result, all the comparisons offered were inconsistent. This thesis addresses those gaps by developing a methodology that enables relevant and consistent comparisons of Earth-Mars communication architectures and supports gap analysis. The methodology is composed of three steps. The first step consists in defining the requirements and organizing them to emphasize their interactions with the different parts of the communication system (the architecture, the hardware and the software). A study of the requirements for a deep-space communication architecture supporting manned missions is performed. A set of requirements is chosen for the present work. The requirements are mapped against the communication system. The second step consists in implementing and evaluating the architectures. To ensure the consistency, the repeatably and the transparency of the methodology developed, a unique approach enabling the assessment of all the architectures based on the same assumptions has to be provided. A framework is designed in a modeling and simulation environment for this purpose. The environment chosen for this thesis is the software Systems Tool Kit (STK) because of its capabilities. A survey of the existing architectures is performed, the metrics to evaluate the architectures are defined, and the architectures are evaluated. The third step of the methodology consists in ranking the alternatives for different weighting scenarios. Four weighting scenarios are selected to illustrate some interesting trades. The ranking of the architectures is performed through a decision-making algorithm, a Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The results from the different weighting scenarios are discussed. They underline the incompleteness of the comparisons performed in past studies, the lack of design space exploration for Earth-Mars communication architectures and the importance of the definition of the set of requirements when designing and comparing architectures. This research provides a transparent and repeatable methodology to rank and determine the best Earth-Mars communication architectures for a set of chosen requirements. It fills several gaps in the comparison of Earth-Mars communication architectures: the lack of definition of the requirements, the lack of a unique approach to implement and assess the architectures based on the same assumptions, and the lack of a process to compare all the architectures rigorously. Before the present research, there was no robust, consistent and rigorous means to rank and quantitatively compare the architectures. The methodology not only ranks but also quantitatively compares the architectures; it can quantifies the differences between architectures for an infinite number of scenarios. It has various capabilities including ranking Earth-Mars architectures based on a chosen set of requirements, performing gap analysis and sensitivities analysis on communication technologies and protocols, and performing design space exploration on architectures. The methodology developed is demonstrated on a restricted scope, it aims at being extended.
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Date Issued
2018-12-11
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