Next-Generation Space Communications Technologies for Building Future Mars Connectivity

This decade will hopefully see the first human stepping on the Martian soil. Thus, supporting and enhancing the life quality of a future crew should be the driving theme for accomplishing manned missions on Mars. In this regard, an on-demand, ubiquitous, reliable, wideband, and low-latency connectivity seems of vital importance, both for in-situ and deep-space communications. Hence, this PhD dissertation aims to introduce innovation on this multi-faceted topic, to propose a new set of solutions which we refer to as Next Generation Communications on Mars (NGC-M). First, we discuss through extensive simulations the viability of an Extraterrestrial Long Term Evolution (E-LTE) porting, where a lander and a rover are re-allocated to compose a wireless local mobile network as the base station (BS) and user equipment (UE), respectively. Next, in order to model realistic Martian channels for further solid evaluations, we present a study on large and small-scale phenomena through a three-dimensional (3D) ray-tracing algorithm executed over 3D tile-based rendering of high-resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the ``Red Planet" surface. Then, we formulate a framework for the design of heterogeneous ground-to-space multi-layered (3D) networks implementing Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RAN) for ``Towards 6G" Martian connectivity. The results will spread from simulations of the so-called splitting options, for the virtualization of baseband functionalities on non-dedicated hardware, to end-to-end (E2E) network emulations and on-hardware assessments. Finally, a decode-and-forward (DF) optical wireless multi-relay network (OWmRN), based on satellites orbiting the Lagrangian points (LPs), will be proposed for wideband exchanges of data between Mars and Earth. Data rate over time will be measured with respect to the selected shortest-path for relaying. The analysis of the various techniques, performed in a holistic and systemic view, focuses on viability and performance, taking into account trade-offs and constraints inherent to the unusual and challenging Martian application environment.