By Roland Piquepaille
Software Defined Radio (SDR) is an emerging wireless technology which allows an electronic device equipped with a radio chip to be remotely reconfigurable to perform new functions via software downloads. With SDR, instead of having an expensive multifunction device, your cheap cellphone would automatically morph into a camera or an MP3 player. NASA wants to use this technology to reconfigure its satellites on the fly to perform new tasks. And its engineers have already built an SDR testbed allowing the quick development of new navigation algorithms. These new communication scheme could be used within 3 to 5 years in SDR-enabled space missions. Read more...For example, imagine the benefits for a mission such as NASA's A-Train: below is an illustration showing the satellites of NASA's A-Train formation.
A group of satellites could efficiently communicate directly with SDR, rather than using ground stations and uplinks. The A-train, shown above, is a constellation of 5 satellites that will collect complimentary data, and is an example of a network that would benefit from SDR technology. (Credit: Alex McClung, NASA).
[For more information about this 'train' of satellites and details about individual ones, you can read a previous story, "'Take the A-Train', from NASA."]
Please read the NASA's article if you want to know more about the technology and let's focus here about NASA's plans.
Researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., are so enthusiastic about SDR that they have recently built an SDR test-bed
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