Introduction

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of communication and telemetry systems is the transmission of reliable information or data through an unreliable channel. In space communications a major constraint is the limitation of transmitter power available on the spacecraft. Or, equivalently, for a given transmitter size, and hence power, we are interested in maximizing the possible range of the spacecraft while still maintaining telemetry transmission to the earth within a specified error rate. Also, the waveforms of the transmitted signals are limited by the complexity of the coding and transmitting equipment, but more significantly by their allowed bandwidth. The bandwidth normally must be small enough so that transmission over adjacent channels is not affected by the operation in the given channel.